


The Bonesaw Spider

by GavotteAndGigue



Series: Dreamscape [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), The Sandman (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Rape, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, past Dick Grayson/other, past Jason Todd/Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-11-17 10:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11273490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GavotteAndGigue/pseuds/GavotteAndGigue
Summary: Jason has been taken. Can the Bat Family and Jason's exes put aside their differences long enough to find him?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: You probably need to read the first fic, “In Dreams We Promise” for this one to make sense. http://archiveofourown.org/works/10853595/chapters/24100023
> 
> Unlike "In Dreams We Promise," I'm posting this one as I write it, so it will be much slower, but hopefully at regular intervals. So bear with me! I'm also thinking this fic might be more action/adventure oriented. Plotting out my ideas, so we'll see! Tags will also be updated as we go.

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

Dick darted around a corner and dropped into a low crouch. He instinctively hid in the shadows, though it wouldn't do much good because Red Hood’s helmet was equipped with night vision. Still, if he didn't want to get caught, moving quickly and keeping a compact profile worked even in broad daylight.

He peeked around the edge of the wall, angling his next move before springing into a roll into the next room.

He was immediately tackled and pinned, arm twisted behind his back and lying face down.  The Red Hood was on top of him, his thighs pressed to either side of him, and his groin pressed against his ass.

“One, two, three, fo--" Jason started, but Dick flexed his back, arching his legs backward to hook his heels on Jason's shoulders, throwing him off balance enough to roll out from under him.  He used the momentum to flip himself into a ready stance.

“Damn Dickie.  No one should be that flexible.”  Jason was picking himself up off the floor. “That’s just freaky.”  He removed his helmet and turned back to Dick, revealing an arched brow and teasing grin. “We’ve been at this for hours, why don't we call it a draw?”

Dick dropped his fight stance, relaxing into a grin as well.  “Yeah, okay.  I'm starving, let's go upstairs.”  

Jason was already walking away towards the stairs, not breaking his stride as he clapped his hands and said, “Lights.”

The room lights gradually brightened.

They had been playing a game of “tag” for the last several hours in the specially designed floor of their apartment that Tim had outfitted for them. It included several moveable wall constructs and holographic projections that let them set up different obstacles and training scenarios. This particular setup was simply designed to have places to run and shadows to hide in, and Dick had wanted to work on stealth and hand-to-hand combat. No weapons. He wanted Jason to have to use his body against him in a battle scenario to make sure he was working through his triggers. He was acclimating himself to unwanted touch, so as not to be a liability in the field.

It was working, and they had both been back out in the field for a few weeks now. Dick had even gone out on missions with the Titans and he had managed just fine, but Jason had expressed his concerns anyhow. Dick appreciated that Jason worried about him, after what had happened, but he didn't want to let that stop him. And so he had convinced Jason to train with him to force the issue. Jason hadn’t liked it. It required him to try to force Dick into positions that were clearly uncomfortable for the both of them.  Dick felt a little guilty, Jason wasn’t without his own triggers as well, but he wanted it to be Jason to help him with this.  Donna or Garth, or Roy would have been able to spar hand to hand, but it would have been awkward to ask them to try to touch him inappropriately as part of their training.  It would have been super awkward with Bruce, and the younger bats were out of the question, so that didn't leave many options.  There wasn't anyone he trusted more with helping him get through his trauma than Jason.

On their way back up to the living quarters of their apartment, Jason turned to Dick and asked, “How did that feel?  When I pinned you?”

Dick thought for a moment. It had only been a few seconds, but he hadn’t frozen up or been seized with panic.  He had done that a few times at the start, before he got back in the field, but now he was able to mostly let his training take over.

“It was okay. Manageable.” Dick said, meeting Jason's eyes.   He knew Jason was picking apart that statement in his head, but it was the truth this time, if only a little vague.  Dick knew he had a tendency to downplay his pain, especially emotional pain. All the bats did, including Jason, so it didn't seem fair that Jason expected Dick to be completely honest with him about this when Jason wasn’t nearly so transparent with Dick.  They had gotten into some pretty serious arguments over this very topic, but in the end Dick had decided to be the bigger person.  Jason was only trying to help him, and it wasn't even as if he was trying to save face or maintain his pride. Jason already saw past all that and he loved him all the same. It was just _habit_.  One that Dick decided that he could learn to break, with Jason at least, in order to preserve harmony and most importantly, trust, in their relationship.

It wasn't like Jason wasn’t doing his best either. Dick could see he was trying, but his pain just wasn't something he was able to articulate in his present state.  Dick hoped he might get there eventually, and sometimes, usually in the afterglow of sex, Jason did manage to open up.

Dick loved those tender moments they had together, and he savored every moment because he had fought so hard to get back to intimacy after living through sexual violence.  It was all the more reason to appreciate how strong Jason was too. He had lived through it as well, and he had come through it with the heart and mind not to repeat that particular cycle of violence.  In fact, he was the exact opposite in many ways. Jason was an attentive lover and much more of a cuddler than he let on.

“I’ll make us some dinner,” Jason said, as they reached the upper floor.  They stopped in the bedroom to change.  It was another couple hours before sunset, and Dick tried not to make a habit of lounging around in his Nightwing gear while they were at home.  A pair of sweats and a tshirt were more comfortable.  Jason had already discarded his helmet, and now he shucked his jacket and stripped off his body armour as well, leaving his undershirt on.  He pulled on a threadbare pair of sweats before heading out into the kitchen.

“Are you headed out to the Titans again tonight?”

“No.  Not for a few days at least,” Dick replied.  “Thought I could stick around here for a bit.”  The truth was he wanted to make sure he was spending enough time with Jason.  The Red Hood was reestablishing himself in Gotham, and he steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the Titans, so Dick ended up splitting his time going back and forth.

“Are you still taking down the traffickers? I could be your backup,” Dick suggested.

“Nah.  I’ve run most of them out already,” Jason said absently.  He wasn't really listening, Dick could tell as he watched Jason pull ingredients out and laid them on the counter.  Chicken, some kind of string bean, something that looked like small onions, and was that a lemon?  Dick smiled.  Alfred would be so proud.

“Stop smirking.  You look like a dumbass.”  Jason had noticed his expression apparently, even as he was taking the chicken out of the packaging and laying it out on the cutting board.  He pulled a knife from the block and started slicing them into strips.

Dick didn't respond, but he didn't change his expression either as he sidled up to Jason. “Here, let me help.  You just want them sliced like you did last time?”  He put his hand out to Jason’s wrist to get him to transfer the knife, but instead of passing the knife over, Jason went rigid and froze.  He stared down at Dick’s hand, his expression blank.

Shit.

Dick didn't draw his hand away immediately, unsure if a sudden movement would cause a reaction.

“What do you see?” Dick asked instead. Tim had been successful at pulling Jason out of his flashbacks before, and he had coached Dick to try to draw him back by focusing on whatever Jason was looking at.

Jason continued staring for another long moment before replying, “The knife. He used to hold my hand.  When he would show me how he used the knife.”

Dick held his breath, unsure of what to say.  That sounded more like the Corinthian than the Dream Lord, and though Dick had only glimpsed him once, what he learned of the monster from Bruce was absolutely vile.

Dick slowly let up the pressure of his hand on Jason’s wrist and drew his hand away.  Jason continued to stare at the knife, turning it over in his hand before looking back at Dick, realization creeping back into his eyes.

“Fuck,” and Jason drew in a sharp breath. “I spaced out again, didn't I?”

“Yeah, but it's fine.” Dick tried to sound calm, but his heart had started running the moment he realized Jason had lapsed into the flashback. “It was just for a minute.”  It had been a while since Jason had one of his episodes, and it had never happened in the field. Fortunately this one was short, and Jason came out of it pretty much on his own. “Do you, uh, want to talk about it?” Dick said, a little awkwardly.

Not surprisingly, Jason simply shook his head, and then glanced sideways at Dick. He must have seen something in his expression, because then Jason added, “It’s not what you think.”

“How’s that?” Dick replied, slightly puzzled at his remark.  

“I know what you think of the Corinthian,” Jason clarified.  “I remembered something, but it wasn’t… it didn't feel… _bad_.”

Dick clenched his jaw, debating with himself on whether or not to push Jason on this. It was an ongoing sore point between Jason and the rest of the family because he was so uncharacteristically defensive of the monster.  Dick agreed with Bruce’s assessment of the Corinthian, based on his description of his behavior, and understood that there was a disturbing sexual undercurrent between them and some level of manipulation going on.  However, none of them knew the full story, and though Jason obviously remembered more about the Corinthian, he wasn't willing to share.

“Okay,” was all Dick could think to reply. He wasn't good at talking about this.  Jason’s past was a touchy subject even before Dick himself had been raped, and now he figured his best option was to let Jason decide where the conversation went.   

However, Jason simply sighed and looked away. He didn't let go of the knife and continued to cut the chicken. “I got this, why don't you just kick back for a bit?”

Jason effectively ended the conversation, and Dick decided to let it drop and moved out of the kitchen. At least Jason didn't seem angry.  He recognized the cues that Jason just needed space to collect himself, so Dick sat on the couch in the adjoining living area and checked his phone.  He sent off a few texts to Tim and Damian before settling back into the cushions and closing his eyes. He had only gotten back to Gotham from a Titans mission the night before, and had promptly crawled into bed with Jason and crashed. He still had some catching up on sleep to do, and he was years into the habit of catnapping whenever he could.

He drifted off quickly, slipping into a dream where he could see a tall man with pale hair, his back turned towards him.  As Dick approached however, the man turned, smiling at him with three horrific mouths.  The Corinthian.

“What's the matter, Dick?”  The monster said with a mocking tone. “Don't tell me you're jealous?”

“No!  Jealous of you?  You’re a sick bastard.”  He lunged forward, aiming to strike, but the man simply side-stepped and laughed.  

“He’s like a little puppy you know. You just have to pet him a little and he’ll roll over and be your whore.”

“Shut up!”  Dick rounded on him again, only to be interrupted by a voice from behind him.

“ _Dick.  Wake up._ ”

It was Jason's voice. Dick turned around, searching him out, but couldn't see him.

“ _Dickie, come on. You’re dreaming. Open your eyes._ ”  Jason’s voice was right in his ear. Not loud, but pleading and _real._

Dick opened his eyes and sat up with a gasp.  Jason was kneeling next to the couch, leaning in close but not touching, a look of concern on his face.

“You okay?” he said.  “You were tossing around and mumbling in your sleep.”

Dick’s heart was still pounding slightly, but he was calming.  There was no threat that he could see, and his memory of the dream was quickly fading.  He remembered seeing the Corinthian, but whether it was really him or his own personal conjuring of his fears for Jason, he couldn’t say.  

Dick looked around the room and noted it was sundown, the last rays of light streamed in through the windows and cascaded into the room at a low angle.  He turned to look at Jason, and the light was illuminating the side of his face in an orange glow.  It was a little strange as Dick noticed, not for the first time, that though he knew Jason’s eyes were supposed to be blue, in this light they had a tinge of green.  They almost looked like a vivid teal.

Jason was still looking at him, waiting, and Dick realized that he was expecting an answer to his question.

“Yeah,” Dick finally said.  “I’m fine.”

“Bad dream?”

“Yeah.”  Dick reached out a hand to touch Jason’s face.  His eyes definitely looked teal.  Bright and intense as always and it took Dick’s breath away. He leaned in closer until their lips were almost touching.  Dick was feeling strangely _possessive_ suddenly.  He wanted to know Jason was his and his alone.  “I want you,” he whispered, and covered Jason’s lips with his own.

Jason opened up to the kiss, and Dick pulled him up onto the couch and climbed into his lap, pressing him into the back cushions with his hands on his shoulders.  Dick leaned down over him and ground himself against Jason’s hardening member, pulling up his undershirt so he could run his hands along Jason's chest, thumbing a nipple as he invaded his mouth with his tongue.

“Nnngh…” Jason moaned.  Dick had been pleasantly surprised to find that Jason was highly responsive to certain sweet spots. Ever since… well, after _what had happened_ , Jason had often allowed Dick to take the lead as he worked at getting comfortable with being fully intimate again. It wasn't about who was being penetrated, because Dick definitely had a preference in that respect, but more about who was in _control_.  Jason let Dick make demands of him.  He allowed Dick to explore his body at his own pace, and it had given Dick the opportunity to discover that he could push Jason close to the edge just by teasing his erogenous zones… _petting_ him even, until Jason was wound up like a coil and moaning his name under his hands.

Dick wanted to see that wantonness on Jason's face again, and he edged off the couch, stripping off Jason's undershirt and sweats before slowly undressing himself. He made a show of it, and Jason watched, gaze clouded with unabashed lust as he stroked himself fully erect.

Dick smiled as he climbed back onto Jason's lap, slipping his hands into the couch cushions to grab the bottle of lube he had hidden there.

Jason gave him a look, one arched brow that said _Really?_  He didn't complain however, when Dick slicked his own fingers to prepare himself. He leaned in and sucked the curve between Jason's neck and shoulder, thumbing his nipple again with his free hand, and thrust his hips to rub their cocks together.

Jason brought his hands up to cup his ass, moving Dick’s hand away so he could slip his own fingers into Dick, massaging his prostate, and Dick let out a long, low moan of his own.  

He grabbed Jason's hand, pulling his fingers away, and then took Jason's cock in hand and positioned himself over it.  He bore down, and took Jason into himself in one smooth motion.

“Dick,” Jason gasped, and Dick savored the feel of Jason filling him.  Felt the slight burn of his body accommodating the girth of Jason's hardness.  He rocked against him, moving his hands to Jason’s shoulders again, holding him down at the same time he leveraged himself to slide up and down, building up a pulsating heat between them.

“Touch me. Stroke me,” Dick demanded, and Jason moved a hand to grip his member, matching his strokes to Dick’s rhythm.

“Tell me you want me, Jason,” Dick said huskily. “Tell me you’re mine.”

“Nnnnh,” Jason moaned between breaths.  “Fuck… yes, Dick.”

“Yes what?  Tell me.”  Dick moved a hand to tease his nipple again, and clenched himself around Jason as he moved.

“Wh--,” and Jason gave a garbled moan.  “Yes… fuck.  I'm yours. Th--... this is for you.”

Dick worked himself over Jason, feeling the crescendo of pleasure building as he worked himself up and down, bouncing himself on Jason's hips as he continued to grip his shoulders.  He looked down at Jason. He had his head thrown back, eyes half lidded, but Dick wanted to see more. He wanted to see the need in his eyes.

Dick halted his movements abruptly, shifted himself and moved off of Jason, leaning against the back wall behind the couch instead.

“Hold me up and fuck me, Jason,” and Dick spread his legs as he propped himself at the top edge of the couch.

Jason climbed onto the seat cushions and complied, hoisting Dick’s legs up with his arms, placing his cock against Dick’s slick hole again and thrusting himself in.

“Faster, Jay. Harder.”  Dick leaned forward and tongued behind Jason's ear as he quickened the pace, then moved down to suck at Jason’s neck again, biting down slightly, before capturing his mouth. He moved his hands to tease at Jason’s chest, eliciting a shuddering gasp.

“How much do you want this, Jay?”  Dick groaned. “Show me. Show me you need me.”

Jason's thrusts were rhythmic and forceful now, and Dick let himself ride the movement, wedged between Jason's pistoning hips and the wall. Several months ago he would have found this position highly uncomfortable, probably triggering a panic attack.  With anyone else it probably _still_ would have, but this was _Jason_ , and now it just made him feel blissfully complete. Jason was everything and everywhere, filling all his senses, inside his body, in his mouth, his scent filling his nose, every inch of his skin tingling from the sensation of their coupling.  Jason was _his_.  And Dick was Jason's.

Their breaths mingled as Dick pulled back slightly, gasps quick and erratic as the pace continued fervently.  The tension was building fast, the friction and heat becoming overwhelming and Dick could feel them both hurtling toward climax.  He gave his cock a few hard strokes as Jason let out a low keen, finally reaching his peak, with Dick reaching his own climax immediately after.  He released himself against Jason's navel, painting his abdomen in sticky streaks of come.

Jason's knees buckled and they both dropped down into the cushions again.  The couch was too narrow for them both to fit side by side so Dick pushed Jason back into the seat cushions and sprawled himself on top of him, stroking Jason's chest and enjoying the feel of faint tremors that still coursed through them both.

Dick closed his eyes and mapped out the feel of Jason in his mind's eye.  He didn't want to take this for granted ever again. Several months ago he wasn't sure he ever wanted _anyone_ to touch him again, but Jason had been there every step of the way to help him get to this point.  And now that they were here, together, he wanted to just lay like this forever.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Jason said softly, breaking the silence, and Dick was momentarily confused about what Jason could possibly be apologizing about.

“For what?”

“For shutting you out.”  

Oh. That. “Don’t worry about it.”  Dick had his head pillows against Jason's chest, he stroked his stomach gently, touching the scar on his side from where Drakar had stabbed him. “I know it's not easy for you.  I just wish you could talk to me.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

Dick waited a few beats to see if Jason would continue. He didn't, and Dick sighed, his heart aching a little at being rebuffed, but if he pushed anymore Jason wouldn't just close off, he would run away.

“Let's get cleaned up,” Jason shifted and sat them both up.  “Dinner’s been ready for a while.”  He smiled faintly at Dick, as if in apology for the obvious redirect.

They rinsed off quickly, together in the shower, and when Jason stepped out he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

“What the hell, Dick!”  He had a hand up rubbing his neck, a distinct red mark at the curve between his neck and shoulder.  “You gave me a fucking hickey!”  Jason slapped him with a wet towel, and Dick nimbly ducked out of the way, completely failing at suppressing the pleased grin on his face.

“It's fine, Jay,” Dick chuckled. “The collar of your costume will cover it.  And besides, I kind of like how it looks on you.”

Jason huffed and shot Dick a slightly exasperated look.  He stalked to the bedroom to dress again in sweats before heading back out into the kitchen.  

Dick followed likewise.  He had ended up napping for over an hour, so they would be dressing for patrol shortly anyway.  Jason brought two warmed plates of food out of the oven and set them down at the table.

Dick wasted no time digging in. The food was delicious. Forget crime-fighting, Jason should have been a chef.  Dick didn't think he had ever eaten so well since he left the Manor and Alfred’s cooking behind.  Jason never even seemed to look at a recipe -- he just had a knack for it.  He was good at so many things, but he never seemed to realize it.

“Something's going on with the kids in Crime Alley.”  Jason had finished his plate already, and his mind had seemingly moved on to preparing for the night's patrol.  “A lot of kids have disappeared.  Runaways mostly.  Kids no one would have noticed go missing a second time.  But the kids that are left recently cleared out of the old rail station camp. They won’t go near it anymore.”

“Did they get driven out by one of the gangs?”  The Crime Alley street factions were constantly warring over territory. It wouldn't be unheard of for the unaffiliated street kids to have suffered the loss of their camp in one of the gang disputes.

“No.  I looked into it, and it's not that.”  Jason leaned forward, putting an arm down on the table before continuing. “Rumor has it there's a monster lurking in the tunnels.”

Dick quirked a brow in response. Monsters lurking in tunnels, snatching up kids in the dark of night… this was Gotham, so it definitely wouldn't be the first time.  Not Jason's preferred MO of taking down crime bosses either, but still up his alley.  

“Hmm.  How do you know it's not just Killer Croc?  Or some story the traffickers made up as cover?” Dick speculated.

“I don’t,” Jason replied. He stood up from the table, gathering the dishes and taking them to the sink.  “All I know for sure is that someone's making kids disappear, and they deserve better than to have it swept under the rug.”

“Of course, Jay.”  Dick knew Jason always had a soft spot for the kids in Crime Alley, and he was right. Just because they lived on the streets didn't mean they didn't deserve to be protected.  Dick stood up as well and leaned against the counter as Jason cleaned up the dishes.

“So where do we start?”  Dick asked. It had been a while since they had worked a case together.  When they had started their relationship, Jason had been worried about Dick given his premonitions at the time, and was always reluctant to let Dick out of his sight.  But now, Dick was lucky if Jason let him tag along on patrol, his excuse being he didn't want the Red Hood to be too closely associated with Nightwing.  It didn't stop Dick from trying though.

Jason finished rinsing the dishes and wiped his hands.  He stepped passed Dick out of the kitchen, but not before leaning over to peck him on the lips. “Get dressed, baby.  I’ll take you out on the town tonight.”

Finally, Jason was giving him an in.

“Great,” Dick beamed a little too enthusiastically.  “It’s a date!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jason's so good at shutting people out, he’s kind of like Elsa isn't he? And Dick is kinda sorta like Anna? Except instead of sisters, they’re sorta brothers in a not technically incestuous relationship.


	2. Chapter 2

~~~~~ Jason ~~~~~

The rail station had been shut down and condemned years ago after one of Gotham’s many supervillain disasters had caused the tunnels to destabilize.  It was around the time that Batman had first picked Jason up off the streets of Crime Alley.   As it was, the camp hadn’t formed yet until Jason had been safely ensconced in Wayne Manor, so though Jason had heard about the camp and had visited numerous times to check on the kids as Red Hood, he had never actually lived there.

Now, picking through the debris of the abandoned camp, Jason felt an odd mix of empathy for the kids and gratefulness that he had made it off the streets at least for a while.  They had made their way past the broken down barricades and down into the abandoned railway station.  Jason shined his flashlight at the ground, revealing the remnants of burned out firepits, various stolen car parts, and discarded syringes in the refuse.  The tunnels were dark and drafty, but they were dry, and would have provided protection from the harshest of Gotham elements during the winter.  He had spent a few winters on the streets, and he had nearly frozen to death more than once if he hadn't finally capitulated and traded his body for a warm bed.  A place like this would have been a welcome haven, but still, no child should ever have had to live in a place like this.  Jason had tried to get the kids to move as the Red Hood, but most of them had nowhere else to go.

The kids had only occupied the platform area and first several hundred feet of tunnels.  Beyond that, the tunnels were more obviously unstable, and the kids had piled crumbled debris and garbage to form a sort of waist-high barrier that partitioned off the rest of the space.  If anything had snatched the kids, it would have probably have come from there, and Jason made his way to step over the makeshift barrier to get a better look.

“Wait up, Hood.”  Dick had been investigating the other end of the camp, but trotted over as he saw Jason making his way further into the tunnel.  “This place is creepy. I can't believe those kids stayed here on their own for so long.”

Dick masked it well, but Jason could hear the slight nervousness in Dick’s voice.  Fuck.  Jason mentally kicked himself for not having realized it sooner.  The tunnels and the enclosed space -- it was probably too reminiscent of the caverns where Dick had been held and assaulted those several months before.

“Shit, Nightwing. I shouldn't have brought you here.” Jason turned to look at him. “Tell me the truth, are you okay?  Because we can leave right now. I'll come back on my own later.”

“I’m fine,” Dick replied, his face grim.  “I don't like it here, but I can handle it.”

Jason studied him.  He was composed and alert, with a determined look on his face.  Dick wasn't falling apart or panicking. He was uncomfortable, but not uncontrolled. Plus he was goddamned stubborn, so unless Jason had a good reason, Dick would be insulted and dig his heels in if Jason asked him to turn back.

Okay then.

Jason decided to press on, shining the flashlight up ahead into the darkness.  His helmet, and Dick’s domino mask, were equipped with thermal-infrared sensors, but the ambient temperatures were even, so flashlights worked best to do a quick scan of the area.  

They moved forward at a slow but steady pace, Dick covering their rear, when Jason halted abruptly.  He had his spotlight on something lying on the ground a few yards away.  At first, Jason thought it was a pile of debris.  It was dark and muddy looking, but then he made out the pale arches of bone. A human skull, small like that of a child.

A sickening pit formed in his stomach as he approached, Dick following closely behind.  

“Is that…?”  Dick didn't finish his question.  

Up close, they could clearly tell it was the decayed corpse of a small child, and Jason balled his fist in anger.  Someone would pay _dearly_ for this.

“He’s been here a while…” Dick’s voice was soft and sad, and his expression was somber.   “Several months at least, judging by the decay.”

Dick kneeled to get a closer look, shining his own flashlight onto the bones. “There's something… it looks likes the bones have been cut. Probably sawed.  The arms and legs. The torso….”

Jason dragged his gaze away from the body, scanning the immediate area for clues, when his spotlight hit another crumpled form. Another body. Another _child_. And then another.  And yet another.  There were ten at least, trailing down further into the darkness of the tunnel.

Jason raised his arm to follow the trail of bodies with his flashlight until the tunnel began to curve into a bend in the darkness.  He froze. There was something at the far end of the tunnel.

“Christ, what the hell is _that_?”  Jason drew his gun with his other hand, while keeping the spotlight trained on the dark form he spotted about a hundred feet down.

“What?  I don’t see anything,” Dick said, turning to look at where Jason had his spotlight.  “Are you picking up on thermals?”

“No.  Just look at the damn spotlight.  You don't see that?”  Jason asked incredulously.  He could clearly make out the dark form of something extremely large, hunkered down but almost reaching the top of the tunnel, peaking at them from behind the bend. It was hard to make out the exact shape, but Jason could see what looked like a head with pointed ears, and the glint of slitted eyes.

“No,” Dick was looking at the spotlight as well, but shook his head slightly. “I don't see anything on IR or thermal.  What do you see?  Is it moving?”

As if on cue, the thing began to advance slowly, as if crawling on all fours.  It's limbs thudded against the floor and shook the entire tunnel around them.  It let out a low growl that Jason could swear he could feel down to his bones.

“Shit, it's coming!  Tell me you can at least feel that?” Jason said, not taking his eyes off of it as he started to back away.

“Yeah! It sounds big. And heavy.  What the hell do you see?”  Dick said, following Jason’s lead and backing up as well.

Jason fired off several shots, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Dick cover his ears and look between Jason and where he was shooting in confusion. He still couldn't see it. Fuck.

The thing continued to advance despite the fact that Jason’s aim had been true and should have hit it dead in head.  Whatever it was, it looked like normal weapons wouldn't suffice.

A batarang flew from behind Jason. Dick had thrown something -- a burst of phosphorescent dye exploded in the demon’s path. However, the dye didn’t seemed to take. The thing crawled through the cloud still black and leathery.

“It's intangible. Out of phase or something, but it's still coming,” Jason barked, trying to convey the urgency in his voice.  It was advancing quickly and would be on them in a matter of seconds.

He grabbed Dick by the arm and ran in retreat.  Jason could see it more clearly as it drew closer. It was humanoid, large, and covered in dark leathery skin. It did indeed have pointed ears and glowing eyes. A cold tingling prickled up his back.  It felt _evil_.  Like... a _demon_.   

“Damnit, Jason!”  Dick ground out in a frustrated voice as he ran beside him.  “Tell me what you see!  What are we up against?”

“It looks like an alien fucked an elephant and had an evil lovechild,” Jason quipped, as he shined the flashlight over his shoulder to see the thing was almost upon them.  

“We’re not going to be able to outrun it,” Jason panted out.  He stopped and pivoted to face the creature, pushing Dick behind him.  Jason dropped his flashlight and reached into his belt to pull out several flares. He was going to need both hands for what came next.  He threw the flares out around him, lighting the tunnel in a red glow.  “Get the fuck out of here.  I’ll hold it off.”

“No!  Let’s both fall back.  How the hell can you even --?”

Jason didn’t hear the rest. He summoned his All-Blades and charged.  

The demon roared, rearing up as Jason approached and pulled some kind of serrated blade the size of a long sword from behind it's back.  It swiped it's arm down in a diagonal arc.  Jason dropped and rolled under it, bringing an All-Blade up to slash at it's arm.  He connected, and the All-Blade tore through the creatures forearm.

The creature howled in fury, smashing it's other fist into the ground as Jason barely leapt out of the way.  Bits of concrete and debris went flying. One smack from that thing and Jason would be pulped.

Jason scrambled to dodge another blow, but there wasn't much room to maneuver in the tunnel.  The creature slashed at him with the blade again and this time Jason didn't quite move fast enough.  He caught the tail end of it, the serrated teeth of the blade tearing through his armour and slicing into his thigh.  He faltered and tumbled to the ground.

The demon was upon him, lifting the blade for the final strike. Jason lifted his own All-Blades to try and block the blow, but at this angle, with the creature towering over him, even if he managed to deflect, the force of the blow would likely shatter his arms. He would be finished. Jason braced himself for the impact.

Suddenly, a line shot out, wrapping around the blade and yanking it out of the creature’s grasp.  

“Get clear!”  It was Nightwing.  Dick.  Of course he had stuck around.  Jason was stupid to even consider Dick would abandon him, and he was silently thankful because now he had given him an opening.

Jason didn’t waste a second. But instead of moving out of the way, he rolled forward to a spring and rebounded off the creature's own leg to leverage himself into the air.  He stabbed an All-Blade into the creature's shoulder, using it to climb up further before stabbing his remaining blade into its skull.

A sound like a thousand screams at once reverberated through the tunnel, and in the next moment the creature disappeared out from under Jason.  There was nothing to hang on to and he was suddenly falling.  He hit the ground hard and a searing pain shot through his arm.

“Ugh,” he groaned, and rolled to sit up and look around. The creature was gone.

“Jay!  Are you okay?”  Dick was at his side the next second.  He reached out to grab Jason's arm to help him up, but Jason flinched back in pain.

“Fuck!  I think I fell on my arm.”  

“Okay,” and Dick grabbed his other arm instead.  He was still scanning the area, looking around a little frantically.  “Is it gone?”

“You still couldn't see it?” Jason asked, confused.

“No,” Dick shook his head.  “I couldn’t see whatever was attacking, but I could see the blade.”

Right. The blade. It was lying several feet away with the line Dick had shot out still tangled around it.  Jason moved to stand, taking Dick’s hand with his good arm and letting himself be pulled up.  His leg was bleeding, a hot burning pain where the creature’s claw had torn into him.  He limped over to the blade and nudged it with his foot.

“Jay, maybe you shouldn’t --” but Jason ignored him.  There was something strange emanating from the blade.  Jason could feel it pulling at him.  He reached his uninjured arm out and bent over to pick it up.

Suddenly, everything seemed to go dark around him.  The air felt thick and heavy, and everything around him seemed as if he was looking through inches of thick clouded glass.  He turned his head, and he could see a large form approaching.  But instead of something dark and heavy like the demon, this one was pale and moved as if it floated.  He could hear clacking, like several pairs of hard heels against the floor, and a hollow sound like the rattling of bones.  As it drew closer he could see long spindle-jointed legs supporting a large abdomen.  

A spider.  Huge.  With eight pitch black eyes that bore into him.

Jason drew a sharp breath, and something like a jolt of electricity shot through him.  He dropped the blade and fell backwards onto his ass.

He looked around, and everything was back to normal.  Dick was in front of him, yelling something, reaching his hands out to release the catch of his helmet to take it off.

“Jay!  Shit! I told you not to pick that thing up.”  Dick was waving his hands in front of his face, and Jason shook his head, trying to clear it.

“What the hell was that?”  Jason finally managed to focus on Dick, who looked back at him with a sigh of relief.

“Jesus!  You tell me.”  Dick put his arms around him.  “Was that another flashback?  What the hell is going on?”

“No.  It was _different_.” Jason struggled to find the right words.  He could remember the image of the white spider clearly, including the shiny black glint of it's eyes.  “There was something watching.  We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah.  Let’s go.”  Dick pulled Jason to his feet again and made to leave.

“Wait.  The bodies of those kids, and that blade.”  He turned back to look at the dark tunnel, and then at the blade lying on the ground, but hesitated to pick it up again.

“There’s nothing we can do for those kids until we figure out what we’re dealing with.”  Dick put a hand in front of him to stop him.  “Don’t touch that thing again, Jay.  It did something to you.  We don’t know what it is.”

“We can’t leave it,” Jason protested.  “It’s dangerous.  I can feel it.”  He didn’t want to take the chance that someone else would stumble on it.  Even now, it felt like it was calling to him.  Beckoning for him to pick it up.  He quashed it down, and turned to Dick instead.  “Did you feel anything when you lassoed it with your line?”

“No.  Nothing.”

“Okay.  Let’s use the line to drag it then.”

It wasn’t one of Jason’s most elegant ideas, but it seemed to work.  Jason could only effectively use one hand, so Dick carefully knotted the line around the blade and dragged it behind them and out of the railway station.  It clattered around with a strange hollow sound.  Whatever it was, it wasn’t made of metal.  It was a strange dull white color, as if it was made out of bone, with a sharp serrated sawtooth edge.

When they reached the bat cycles they had used to get to the station however, they were faced with the challenge of how to carry it back without touching it.  They opted to tie it to one of the cycles and set it on autopilot to follow, and then they would ride two-up on the other.  

Then there was the dilemma of where to take it.

“I don’t want that thing back at our place,” Dick said crossly, and Jason agreed.  The idea of bringing something that felt so _wrong_ into their home was disturbing.

“Okay.  To one of the bunkers?”

“No.  We need to get it analyzed, and we don’t have the equipment.  We’re going to need to take it to the Bat Cave.”

“Fine,” Jason sighed.  He and Bruce were getting along better, but he still didn’t like to turn to the Batman unless he really needed to.  Force of habit maybe, but at the same time he wasn't going to risk letting something dangerous slip out of his grasp for the sake of his ego.  Plus the labs in the Bat Cave were second to none. 

“You’re too injured to steer,” Dick assessed, looking at the way Jason held his left arm to his side. He snapped a helmet on and climbed onto the batcycle before turning back to Jason.  “Can you hang on to me for the ride back?”

“Yeah.”  Jason clasped his Red Hood helmet  back on and climbed onto the batcycle behind Dick.  He revved the engine and they were off, the second cycle trailing behind them.

They had only made it a few blocks before Jason started to notice something was off.  It was more a feeling than anything he could actually perceive. He felt like they were still being watched.

“Keep your eyes peeled, Dick,” Jason warned. He was pressed against Dick’s back on the batcycle with his good arm around his waist, but he had to speak into the comm due to the noise of the engine.  “Something's not right.”

“Well that's probably not going to help,” Dick almost seemed to laugh, “since I couldn't see the thing in the first place.”

“You know what I mean, dumba-- ah!”  Jason was abruptly cut off as he was suddenly yanked off the speeding batcycle.  Something had grabbed onto his jacket and pulled him into the air. He immediately shrugged out of the sleeves and shot a line out at the nearest building to break his fall. He landed on his feet with a grunt.  The cut on his leg still stung and his balance was a little off with only one good arm.  His other arm was throbbing a dull ache. Probably fractured. Damn.

Nightwing had turned the batcycle around to meet him, dismounting and running over to help Jason up.

“Holy shit!  Is that what you saw earlier?”  Dick was gaping up at something, and Jason followed his gaze to see the huge white spider he had seen when he had touched the blade.   It was hanging from a web draped between two buildings, with Jason’s discarded jacket dangling in a strand of web nearby.

“You can see it?” Jason exclaimed.

“Yeah.”

“Well it's probably not any consolation, but that's not what attacked us in the tunnel,” Jason said. “That's what I saw when I picked up the blade.”

The spider began to descend and Jason drew his gun in preparation.  It touched the ground on the opposite side of the street and something flew past him.  Dick was throwing shit again, a batarang apparently, and it exploded on the ground in front of the spider.

“Stay where you are!  What do you want?”  Dick called out.

_Great_ , Jason thought.  Just like Dick to try and talk to it.

To Jason’s surprise the spider actually halted, but then the air around it seemed to ripple and in the next moment it disappeared.  

Jason stayed alert, keeping his gun drawn with his good arm, back to back with Dick as they scanned the area.  It was late into the night and the streets were unusually deserted this side of Crime Alley.  It seemed the dealers, pimps, and riff raff that normally prowled the streets at night had been scared off by the rumours of monsters.  Most of the buildings here were abandoned, but the remaining residents kept their windows shut at night, turning a blind eye to screams in the night, not because they didn't care, but because it was the only way to survive.

It was fortunate perhaps then, because it meant there were no bystanders around if they were attacked again.  Jason backed them toward the two waiting batcycles at the curb.  The spider was still there somewhere, watching them. Jason couldn't say how, but he just knew.  

“Let’s go,” Jason said quietly, and Dick hopped up onto the cycle.  He was about to follow on, when suddenly, the spider reappeared right beside them.

Jason cursed and dove out of the way as a set of long jointed legs came crashing down toward him.  The impact was strong enough to leave some serious gouges in the cement, and as he tumbled to the side, Jason caught a closer look at the spider. It's exoskeleton was thick and bony, and it's legs were long with a row of sharp sawtooth spines along the outer edges.

Huh.  It's legs looked like the blade the demon had wielded in the railway tunnels.

“Nightwing,” Jason shouted, “look at it's legs. It's probably after the blade!”

Dick had dodged out of the way of the spider in the other direction, closer to the batcycles. He had flipped through the air in a graceful arc and landed several feet away.  At Jason’s alert however, he made a dive back towards the cycles, skirting several jabs of the spiders legs, and landed next to the batcycle with the blade. Dick punched a button on the console, and the cycle sped off, following whatever autopilot command Dick had initiated.

Jason pulled himself up and fired several shots at the spider as it clambered after the cycle, but the bullets hardly made a dent in it's shell.  It whipped around suddenly and threw a line of web at him, and Jason wasn't fast enough to avoid getting caught. The thick sticky line wrapped around his legs, immobilizing him.  

The air around the spider rippled again before it disappeared once more.

“Get that batcycle back.” Jason called to Dick as he pulled out his knife to slash at the webbing.  “We don't know why it wants that blade, but it's dangerous.”

“Maybe it belongs to it? With it looking like it's leg and all?”  Dick punched a code into his wrist, presumably to call the cycle back.

“Even so, that blade was likely used to murder at least ten kids,” Jason replied.  He was still struggling with the webbing, the thick sticky cords of it were unraveling and tangling around his hands. Fuck. It was disgusting.

Just then they heard the low rumble of the cycle returning, veering around the corner toward them.  Dick had his escrima out in a ready position, but as the cycle screeched to a halt in front of them, they could see the blade was gone.

“Shit.” Jason finally scrambled to his feet, bits of web still clinging to his hands and legs, and called forth his All-Blades again.  He bit down a cry of pain as he struggled to hold the second blade with his bad arm.

“Where is it?” Dick was back-to-back with him again, scanning the area.

As if on cue, the air rippled again several feet away, but this time, instead of a spider, a woman appeared.  

Her form was slight, and she was dressed in a simple flowing white robe, her face cast downward and obscured by long strands of black hair. She held the hilt of the blade in her hands, the tip pointed down and balanced on the ground.

“What do you want?” Dick yelled again, and waited a few beats for an answer.

“Come closer.”  Her voice floated through the air, barely more than a whisper.

“No fucking way, lady!”  Jason didn't have the patience for negotiation that Dick did, and he wasn't about to be caught off guard again.  Jason moved forward to attack, but Dick held up a hand to stop him.

"What are you doing with that sword?” he called out again to the woman.

The woman slowly raised the sword above her head, revealing her face as she did.  Two large round black eyes bulged from her face, surrounded by several smaller eyes arranged in two rows.  Covering the entire lower half of her face was a set of the most vicious looking fangs Jason had ever seen.

“I will destroy it,” she finally spoke, and brought the blade down to the ground in a powerful swing, shattering it across the pavement.

They backed away as the bottom of her robe began to bulge, eight legs erupting outwards and the bulbous abdomen of a spider protruding behind her.  With a screeching hiss, she recoiled before launching forward at them.

They dodged in opposite directions again, and Jason rolled behind her and slashed at a leg with an All-Blade.  It cut a large gash, and the spider hissed again as it's dark blood spilled onto the ground.

“Lets not make any new evil blades, Hood,” Dick quipped, as he flipped and dodged an array of jabs and strikes from her legs.

“Yeah well, your negotiation skills sucked,” Jason threw back, as the air rippled again.  She disappeared and reappeared a few feet away.

Dick threw out a bola, and Jason spared a fraction of a second to wonder where Dick had even been hiding them on his person, before the spinning line tangled around three of her legs to bring her crashing down on her side.  She compensated quickly however, raising up again on her other legs as the sawteeth edges cut through the bola line.  She threw out a cord of sticky web, and Jason rolled to the side, barely keeping out of her line of fire.

Dick flipped in the air as Jason dodged another attack, tasing her with his escrima as he sprang off of the back of her bulging abdomen.  She screamed something primal and turned her focus on him, rushing him in a flurry of sawtoothed legs.

Jason was running to attack from behind when Dick called out, “Fall back!  We need to --....”

She suddenly faded into the rippling air, reappearing next to Dick.  He launched into an evasive maneuver, but she shot out a leg at a lightning speed, whipping Dick while he was still mid air and slamming him into the ground.  Another shot of web around his legs and he was incapacitated.  She held him down with a leg, knocking the escrima out of his hands with another leg and pinning him.

“Withdraw or he dies.”  She hissed at Jason, and he immediately stopped short, dispelling the All-Blades and raising his open palms into the air.  Dick was laying face down, the large clawed end of a bony spider leg pressing into his back.  He was breathing heavily, could even be concussed from the force of hitting the ground. And shit.  The position he was in was probably triggering him.

“Let him go,” Jason demanded. “You destroyed the blade.  You got what you wanted.”

“That is not what I wanted.”  She let out a chittering sound, like a series of fast clicks that petered out into something that Jason swore sounded almost like a sob. Almost.

“What do you want?”

A long jointed leg beckoned him towards her. “Come closer.”

“Let him go first.”  Jason stood fast, but worry tore at him as the spider woman dug her claws into Dick.  He gasped involuntarily as she punctured his suit, trickles of blood welling up on his back.  He was struggling to get some leverage, but he was tangled in her web as well, and couldn't drum up enough momentum to dislodge her.

“Or you will do what?”  She sucked in another throaty breath. That most _definitely_ sounded like a sob.  “As if I could be hurt anymore than I already have been?”  Another clicking breath, like a scoff. Was she _sad_? Perhaps, Jason thought, he could use that to his advantage to free Dick.

“That blade.  It was made from another of your kind, wasn't it?”  He could empathize with loss, but talking someone down wasn't his strong suit.  He was much better at riling someone up, but he needed to buy some time, and Dick wasn’t fully _right_. Normally it was harder to keep him down, but he was breathing a little too hard and fast under the spider’s legs for Jason's liking.  

“The blade or whoever it came from,” he continued, “it meant something to you?”

She didn't respond immediately.  Just stared hard with her eight unblinking eyes, almost like a physical force that bore into him.  Just like he had felt when he had first seen her after picking up the now shattered blade.

“Grief,” she finally said and let out another soft chittering.  Another throaty sob, and then, “Come closer.”

Jason took a step forward, but stayed slightly out of immediate reach.

“You lost someone important to you. I get it.  But you're done here. Let him go. We won't bother you anymore.”

Her response was another chittering sound, and she slowly lifted her legs off of Dick and he immediately rolled away.  Jason was already sprinting to his side when she suddenly sprung at him.

Stupid. Time slowed down, and the word kept running through his damn brain. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.  He had been distracted with getting to Dick and was completely unprepared when she suddenly grabbed him with the clawed ends of her spider legs.  He heard Dick scream something at him, felt her yank him toward her nightmarish face, jaws widening.  Something pierced his shoulder, a hot searing pain and then a rippling of air.  The world was lurching around him, and he succumbed to the dark of unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- Anyone read Saga? I was picturing something like The Stalk  
> \-- Google a picture of “Jorōgumo” - pulling a few ideas from this Japanese yokai myth


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I want to keep to posting regularly, like weekly or semi-weekly, but man, work has been a bitch lately. I literally worked from 7:30 am to 1am the next day one day. So I might not have a chapter ready for next week, might be more like another 1.5 weeks. Things will free up starting next week though, so I won't be so exhausted and can do a little more writing.

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

“No!”  Dick screamed.  He watched helplessly, still tangled in sticky web as the spider woman grabbed Jason and bit into his shoulder.  The air began to ripple again, and Dick was slicing through the spider silk wrapped around him frantically.  Slicing through his own suit, his legs, his hands and scrambling up towards Jason.  By the time he stood up, they were gone.  Jason was _gone_.

He looked around, pivoting, looking up at the buildings… the skyline. Nothing.

“No… Jay….” He had to keep looking. He had to get help.

He activated his comm.  “Nightwing to Penny One. Come in.  Code red.”  He didn’t bother to try to hide the panic in his voice.

“This is Penny One.  What is the situation?”  The usual crisp cant of Alfred’s voice did nothing to dampen his rising dread.

“He’s gone. Ja--... Red Hood,” Dick stammered. “A spider woman... thing. It took him!”

“I'm on my way.  ETA five minutes.”  It was Bruce's voice that cut over the line suddenly, and Dick was silently relieved to have support coming in.  Normally he would be calm and in control.  He had had teammates snatched or kidnapped before, and people usually looked to _him_ in these situations.  But this was too _close_.  Jason had been his emotional center for most of the last year and it was still too soon since the traumatic experience with the Endless where Jason had nearly died.  Dick knew he needed to get it together, but he was too compromised.

Even with Bruce on the way, Dick knew they wouldn't be able to find Jason on their own.  He ran through the shortlist of his contacts in his head.  Zatanna was probably a good start.  She could find that guy… the one who dealt with a lot of dark magic, John Constantine.  There were others… he just needed to find a way to contact them.  They were ill equipped to confront anything head on with a magical or mystical aspect, and that blade and the spider demon were definitely not of this world.

Dick glanced over at the shattered blade at the end of the street. Jason had seen the spider first when he touched it. Even if it was in pieces, maybe it could still give him a clue.

He knelt by the shards -- bone white with sharp, jagged edges scattered on the ground. He yanked off a glove and reached out a hand, paused to take a breath, and picked up a shard.

Screaming. He heard a child screaming. _Children_  screaming. He felt fear and excruciating pain.  The flash of something long and white in the darkness.  The taste of blood and bile in his throat.  He thrashed at something holding him down, tearing at him. _Cutting_ him as he writhed in agony.

“Nightwing!”  Someone called out.  They were grabbing at his wrist, and Dick fought back, swinging his other fist at the attacker.  

“It's me.  Don't fight me.”  That voice. The Batman voice. It was Batman. Bruce.

He felt him pry open his fist, and something fell from his hand.

The bone shard.

Dick gasped and tried to blink.  He couldn't see, his mask was blurred with tears.

“Nightwing, are you with me?”  Bruce’s voice again.  He could make out a dark hulking figure in front of him, but he couldn't see through the blurred lenses. He reached a shaky hand up to pull off the mask, but Bruce stopped him.

“Don’t.  You're still in the field. Just flip the lenses.”

Dick tapped the edge of the mask and the lenses retracted. He could see Batman clearly kneeling in front of him now.  “What happened?” he croaked out. His throat felt raw.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Bruce replied. His voice was hard and rough, but Dick could hear the tension of worry undercutting his tone. “You called in a code red. Said Jason was taken. I arrived to find you trapped in some sort of hallucination. You had this in your hand.”  He held up the bone shard Dick had picked up with a pair of forceps.  It was bloody and Dick belatedly realized it had cut into his hand from him gripping it so hard.

“I thought,” Dick swallowed. “I thought it could help me find him.”

“What is it?”

“It was a blade we found in the old railway station.”  Dick gave a quick summary of what had happened, while Bruce bagged the shard and stowed it in one of the sealed compartments in his belt.  He hovered a moment, as if wanting to offer Dick a hand up.  A rare moment of hesitation from the Batman, but Dick knew he was trying to gauge whether Dick would be receptive to the touch.

Truth be told, he wasn't sure he could manage being handled at the moment.  If it were Jason, he would have been fine -- welcomed it more than anything -- but he had been taken. _Taken_.

Dick collected himself and shook his head at Bruce.  He picked himself up from where he had been kneeling on the ground and found his hands were still shaking slightly.  He had seen… no… he had _felt_ the murders of the children when he touched the shard, but unfortunately it didn't give him any clues on how to find Jason.  Dick took a step forward and flinched.  His adrenaline rush was dissipating and he was starting to feel the burn and sting of the cuts on his back, hands and legs.

“You're injured,” Bruce was taking stock of him.

“I’m fine. It's minor. Finding Jason is more important.”   Physically he could handle it, but emotionally he was feeling close to the edge.  He wasn't going to tell Bruce that, however.  There was no way he would let himself be sidelined when Jason was still missing.

Bruce didn’t reply.  Just pressed his lips into a thin line before taking out a scanner to take readings of the area.

“There are energy fluctuations,” Bruce finally said, “but you need--.”

They were interrupted by a large white bird suddenly flying low and landing on the ground near the shattered blade. There was a rustling sound and a gray mist formed behind them.   For a moment, Dick thought it was the spider again.  Both he and Bruce took a defensive stance, but then a woman with dark pits for eyes and white corded hair coalesced before them.  He recognized her.

Essence.

“Where is Jason?”  She shot forward and grabbed the front of Dick’s suit, hauling him slightly upwards as she floated above him.  Dick was still slightly shell-shocked, but he snapped out of it quickly, bringing his feet up to vault himself off her torso and flipping away.

“You don't get to make demands of me,” Dick snapped.  “What do you know about what just happened?”

“Hmmph.”  Essence merely lowered herself to the ground and crossed her arms.  She turned to Bruce -- Batman, and gave him a nod of acknowledgement.  “I'm not here to fight.  I've been sent here to investigate a disturbance.”

“Does this have to do with your master, the Dream Lord?”  Bruce literally growled the words out. His distaste for the Endless was plain to see.

“No.  It is not his doing, nor mine.”  Essence said with a frown.  “I have been tasked with dealing with threats to the Dreaming in the waking world, and that includes keeping an eye on threats to Jason.”  She turned an icy stare at Dick. “Where is he?”

Any normal man would have crumpled under Essence’s gaze.  To say that she apparently didn't like him would have been putting it lightly, but Dick wasn’t any normal man either.  He had faced down many a villain with more hateful looks.  He wasn't sure what he had done to incur such wrath from her, but he knew Essence was powerful. She had her powers restored to her directly from the Lord of the Dream himself. If anyone could help them find Jason, outside of Dream himself, it would be her.  Finding Jason was the most important thing right now.  

“Jason was attacked, and taken.”  Dick squelched the rising fear and panic in his gut as he repeated the details he had told Bruce.  He watched the flicker of true concern seep into Essence’s face as he told her that Jason was abducted.  

She was worried. Huh.  

He tried to dismiss the pang of emotion that struck him.  He knew that she had _history_ with Jason, but he had never elaborated what that was to Dick.  Whatever it was, he tried to dismiss it. He couldn't deal with it now. They needed to find Jason first.

“I can feel a corruption coming from these shards,” Essence had walked over to kneel over the broken blade.  

“What do you know?”  Bruce had watched the exchange silently, probably not missing the change in her attitude as soon it was confirmed that Jason was in danger.

Essence looked up but didn't respond.  Instead she held out her arm for the white bird to use as a perch.

“The Master was concerned,” the bird spoke.  It was large with sleek white feathers.   _Like a white raven_ , Dick thought. It sounded female, voice soft and dulcet, and he would have been more surprised at the presence of a talking bird if he hadn't poured over Bruce’s case files of the previous events.  He knew there had already been a talking dog, so this wasn't unprecedented.

“There was a disturbance that crossed the space between realms,” the bird continued. “With enough force to reach the Dreaming.  Jason entered briefly and conferred with the Master. He was only able to relay that we needed to find you, before something forced him away. ”

“You mean he woke up?”  Dick said hopefully. That would mean that Jason was definitely alive and that they just needed to find him.

“No,” Essence said gravely.  “He was forcefully removed from the Dreaming. Cut off. We don't know what this means, or who could have done this yet.”

Dick clenched his fist and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.  It felt like the bottom had dropped out from beneath him suddenly.  Bruce came up beside him, probably noting his reaction, and put a tentative hand on his shoulder before turning back to Essence.

“You can help us find him.”  Bruce simply stated.

“I will do everything I can, but Tethys,” Essence nodded to the white bird, “is our conduit to the Lord Dream.”   She turned back to the broken blade lying on the ground. “This is too dangerous to leave here.”

Essence raised her arms and levitated the shards.  A portal opened before her and she floated through, followed by the white bird, Tethys.  Bruce stepped through quickly and Dick had to run to catch up.

He suddenly found himself standing in a strange foreign landscape.  It had been the middle of the night back in the inner city of Crime Alley, but now he stood in broad daylight amidst lush waterfalls, primitive green fronds, and sandy stone structures.  There were doorways and arches leading into various small buildings, but most of it lay in ruins.  There was nary a soul in sight. The place seemed abandoned, but he could tell that at one time this place must have looked magnificent.

“Where are we?”

“My home.”  Essence gave him an irritated look, before proceeding up a long set of stairs to a wide ledge alongside a cliff.  She lowered the levitating shards to the ground and turned toward a set of shelves carved into the cliff wall.  There were various jars of unidentifiable dried herbage.  She skipped over these to procure a large jar of white grains, presumably salt, and began to pour a line of it on the ground, enclosing herself in a large circle around the broken blade.

Dick had trailed close to Bruce to stand off to the side as she murmured some kind of ritual. She paused a moment, then leaned forward to pick up a shard with her bare hand.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Dick tried to warn.

She shot him another angry look and proceeded to pick up a shard anyway.  For a moment nothing happened.  She merely closed her eyes with a look of concentration, but then she let out a pained shout and dropped the shard as if burned.

Dick moved forward to help, but Bruce put a hand out and shook his head.  They waited several minutes more until Essence collected herself, murmuring something again, before she floated out of the circle.

She turned toward Dick, “You saw it too. The children.”  Her dark eyes were slightly moist.

Dick nodded in reply.  The expression on her face told him he didn’t need to explain what that had felt like.  After a moment, he added, “Did you see anything else that could lead to Jason?”

“No.  The blade is too corrupted with the horrors it was used to commit.”  She closed her eyes for a moment before continuing.  “I cannot hold it long enough without being overtaken.”

“Can you purify it?”  It was Bruce who interjected this time.

“No,” Essence said shaking her head. “That is still something that only Jason can do.”

“What about the amulet?” Bruce followed on.

“It was returned to the Lord Dream.”  Essence produced a pouch from somewhere and stepped over to the jar to fill it with salt. She levitated a shard into the pouch and tied it shut.  

“Tethys.”  She motioned toward an overhanging tree growing out of the cliffside, and Dick realized that the white bird had been perched above them, watching this whole time.  “Take this back to your Master.  Tell him everything that has happened.”  

Tethys swooped down in a graceful arc, snatching the pouch from Essence’s hand, and disappeared behind the edge of the ledge.  Dick expected to see her fly off into the distance, but after a few moments he didn't see anything appear over the horizon. The bird, Tethys, had disappeared.

“Now what?” Dick asked.

“Now we return to your city.”  Essence raised her arms and a portal appeared again.  She floated through and Bruce and Dick followed. They were suddenly in Crime Alley again, in the deserted street where Jason had been taken.  The trip to Essence’s home world probably hadn’t taken more than a half hour, and the scene was just as they had left it.  Even the batcycles were still there, and unsurprisingly no one had bothered to call the cops.  The street was just as empty and dilapidated as it had been before, with only several new gouges in the concrete and remnants of sticky web on the pavement.  

It struck Dick how little something as devastating as having a loved one taken from right under your nose affected the cityscape around them.  Loved ones disappearing happened every day here, but the city kept right on going.  Apathetic.   _Tragic_.  It was probably why Jason fought so hard to stop people like the human traffickers.  He believed that if he didn’t stop them, no one would.  Crime Alley would go on being Crime Alley, unchanging and uncaring, unless someone like him did something about it.  Dick didn’t have a permanent home to return to after his parents had died, but he wondered if it was akin to what Bruce had felt going home to an unchanging Manor every night after his parents’ murder.  And then after Jason’s murder.  

 _Jason._ The thought of where he could be and what might be happening to him had a rush of worry filling his heart again.  They needed to find him soon, but they needed more clues.  They needed to go back to the tunnels.

“We need to go back to the railway station,” he said out loud. “And I need to put in a call to the Titans.  Can you reach out to Zatanna?”  He said, turning to Bruce.

“It's already done.”  Bruce had been taking samples of the remaining spider’s web, pocketing them in his belt before standing. “Zatanna is on her way.”

From off to the side came the sound of an irritated scoff and Dick turned to see Essence floating a short distance away. She looked peeved, and she was holding something bunched together and brown. Jason’s jacket.

“Where did you find that?”  Dick moved forward to take it from her, but she floated out of reach.

“It was hanging from a web.”

“Give me that,” Dick held out a hand to receive it. “It's not yours.”

“It's not yours either.”  She didn't make a move to return it.

No, it wasn't, but Dick felt possessive of it anyhow.  Jason was _his_.  They were _together_ , and by extension the jacket should be in Dick’s possession until he could give it back to Jason.

They stared each other down for a long moment, until Bruce cleared his throat.

“I may be able to find him with it,” Essence finally said, lowering herself to the ground to look Bruce in the eye at level ground.

A portal opened behind her and she turned to leave, but Bruce stepped between her and the portal. “How do we contact you?”

Essence scowled, but she seemed to be slightly more tolerant of the Batman than she was of Nightwing.  “You don't. I will find you once I know more.”

“That’s not good enough.”  Bruce didn't budge. “Jason’s life is at stake.”

“I know, and I will do everything in my power to find him,” she said adamantly.  Dick believed her.  He could tell she cared deeply for Jason, but not so much for the rest of the Bats.   

“We have access to resources as well,” Bruce argued.  “One of the world's most powerful magicians is coming to investigate.  We need to exchange information.”  

Not Bruce’s usual MO, but Dick shared his concern that once Essence stepped through that portal, they would never hear from her again whether or not she had information on Jason.  If she found Jason alive, he would return to them eventually if he was of his own volition.  But if not….  Dick stopped himself.  He couldn’t go there.  He wouldn’t even consider giving up hope so soon.

“Please,” Dick followed on, “working together will increase the chances that we find Jason faster.”

Essence turned another withering look toward Dick before replying.  “Fine. I will work with you only to find Jason.  Though I doubt your _friends_ will discover anything useful.”  

She tore a scrap of cloth from her sash, and then pricked her finger with the knife at her belt. She let a drop of blood soak into the fabric before handing it over to Bruce.  “I will try to trace Jason through this,” she held up the jacket, “but I cannot do it here. I will return in a few hours at most. If you find something sooner, burn this, and I will come.”

With that, she stepped through the portal and was gone.

“Couldn't we have just given her a cell phone?”  The half hearted joke came out more as an attempt to hide his anxiety than any true attempt at humour.  Dick was too concerned for Jason to find anything even remotely funny.

“Hnnn,” Bruce grunted.  “I doubt it would have worked where she's going. At least we have a way of contacting her.”  He mounted one of the batcycles and gestured Dick toward the other. “Can you ride?  We need to see what we can find in those tunnels.”

“Yeah.  Right. Let's go.”  Dick got on the cycle, the same one that he had shared with Jason not much more than an hour ago.  He revved the engine and rode after Bruce back to the abandoned railway station. He tried to ignore how much he already missed the feel of Jason pressed to his back as he sped off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End Notes ~~~~~  
> \---For those of you who read original Sandman, Matthew was the raven that everybody would normally recognize. He served as the messenger and go-to for the original incarnation of Dream. He was a pretty cool character, but in the follow-up series called “The Dreaming,” Matthew was accidentally shot and killed by Lucien, Dream’s most trusted servant. Matthew chose not to resurrect, and asked Dream to make Lucien forget that he had killed him. The Corinthian was very sad about it. They were kind of pals at that point, and though The Corinthian wasn’t the one who killed him, he was punished by Dream by turning him mortal for a time. I referenced this a little bit in “In Dreams We Promise,” and The Corinthian had a lover who died while he was mortal.  
> \---In the meantime the new Dream Lord chose Tethys to be his new Raven. She was the first white Raven since Lucien was a raven himself. She was previously some kind of sea creature who had never seen the sun. In relation to this fic, this all happened before “In Dreams We Promise.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo…. I updated the tags. I was writing, and then whoops, turned into non-con. Be warned, it's a little weird. Its still kind of m/m but kinda sorta f/m because it involves the spider. Geez, the things I dream up….

~~~~~ Jason ~~~~~

Jason woke with a jolt.  There had been some kind of tearing noise, except it felt like it had been in his head.  It hurt, and the sudden movement of his awakening sent a flare of pain across his shoulder and arm.  He let out an involuntary groan as he tried to take stock of himself.  His whole body felt hot.  Feverish.  He was lying on his back on a smooth floor, and when he tried to sit up, he found he was tied down with his limbs spreadeagled.

He recalled his last memory -- the spider woman attacked him and the last thing he heard was Dick yelling.  She had bitten him in the shoulder, which coupled with the possible fracture he had suffered earlier, explained why his entire left arm was throbbing a sharp ache.  A quick look around showed he was alone, and he let himself feel a moment of relief that perhaps Dick had escaped unharmed.  

He pulled at his restraints. It was the same sticky web the spider had thrown at him earlier.  It held fast, and Jason had to pause a moment to get his emotions under control.  He hated being tied down, but he had been in worse situations before.  He could get out of this, probably, if he just kept his cool.  He tried to concentrate and call his All-Blades.  There was a brief surge of energy,  but then… nothing.  No magic?  No evil presence?  There had to be something wrong.  It had worked earlier back in Crime Alley.  The spider must have done something to him… he was feeling too weak and pained.

He inspected his surroundings.  It was dark except for a faint glow of cool ambient light coming from somewhere far above.  He was at the bottom of some kind of pit… or not quite.  The walls were rounded and looked like wood, but he couldn't see any panels. It was almost like it had been carved out into a hollow. Was he in some kind of enormous tree?

A whisper of air rushed past his face, and he looked up to see something descending toward him from above.  It was large and white, hanging upside down in a splay of jointed legs -- the spider woman.  The sight was oddly both graceful and grotesque, and Jason watched with a feeling of unease as she dropped to the ground before him with a hollow clack.

She moved forward so that she was standing half over him, her legs arranged around his chest and between his legs. The torso sprouting out of her thorax was human and bare, her long dark hair partially covering her breasts. Her multitude of black bulging eyes looked at him in a piercing stare.

Jason recoiled as she stood over him, sending a fresh stab of pain into his shoulder, but he was only able to turn his head.  The bindings were tight, and his limbs were stretched outwards to the point of pain.

“What do you want?” he croaked out. His throat was dry and scratchy.

She leaned forward and reached out a hand -- one of the human ones coming out of her torso.  It felt cool against his feverish skin.  He turned his head away in an attempt to avoid her touch, but she grabbed his hair, forcing him to look at her face.

He felt a strange pressure in his head as he stared into her eyes.  She was doing something, pushing into his mind, and he tried unsuccessfully to pull away.  

“Your name is Jason,” she finally spoke.

“Stay out of my head,” he spat. Shit. She was invading his mind, and he tried to recall the short list of mental exercises he knew to defend against psychic attacks.

“That won’t work against me.”

“Maybe,” Jason stalled, “but I still gotta try.”  He was panting slightly.  It was getting hard to draw in a breath. His chest felt tight and constricted, and every expansion of his lungs caused a sharp jab of pain in his shoulder where he had been bitten. It was probably infected.  Or she had injected him with some kind of venom.

“Venom,” she echoed. “You will not fight me.”

“Let me go.”  It didn't seem as if she wanted to kill him, and if she was out to eat him she was spending more time than was necessary talking to him.  No… she wanted something, but what that was he couldn't fathom.

“You have something here,” she tapped a clawed spider foot to his chest in response to his unspoken question.  “I need it.”

He wasn't sure what she meant. His heart? Did she want to eat him?  To eat his heart?

“No,” she said and forced his head back again as she brought her face to just inches from his own.  He felt that pressure in his head again, and then it let up and she backed away slightly.  “Not your…   _organs_.  Not to eat.”  Her mouth twisted slightly around the large fangs, almost like a frown. “You have no words for it.”

It seemed she was pulling her language straight from his own head.  No words that could describe what she wanted?  Not his physical organs?  His soul?  Jason puzzled it over, and she picked up on it again and responded.

“No.  You have no words.  You do not even know.   Not your soul, but on it.  Beneath the scars.”  She hooked a claw under the collar of his suit, and wedged her leg at an angle until she was cutting through the fabric and armour with the sawtoothed edge.

Jason's eyes widened in alarm.  “What are you doing?”  He twisted as much as he could, but he was held firm, and the pain from his arm and shoulder was making him nauseous.

She ignored him as she continued to strip him down to his waist.  Then she moved to slice away the fabric from his injured arm.  She ghosted her human hand over his skin, up his arm, applying more pressure to his bicep. He stifled a cry, clenching his jaw while trying to take in enough air through his nose.  Fuck.  His arm was definitely fractured.  

She moved her hand up further, probing at where she had bitten his shoulder.  This time he wasn't able to fully suppress his reaction, and he let out an involuntary whimper of pain as she grabbed him to lift him slightly. She was wrapping a wide  band of silk around his arm and shoulder. She was dressing his wound, and Jason was left more confounded as to what she could possibly want from him.

“You have many uses,” was all she said. Then she lowered a sawtoothed leg to his waistband and he immediately went rigid.

“No,” Jason gasped out.  He was breathing hard now, the air too thin and panic taking away any semblance of concentration he had to try and mediate his breathing. He tried to draw his legs up and kick out, but there wasn't any slack in the web that held him.  She cut through his belt in a swift motion, and then wedged a sawtoothed leg along  his hip and down the front of his pants, ripping the fabric open all the way down his leg like it was tissue paper.  He flinched when she grazed the cut on his leg where the demon had nicked him earlier with the blade, but she paid no regard to his struggles.

She only paused to cut through his bindings to remove his boots.  He tried to pull his leg free of her grasp, but he was too slow. He felt woozy, still feverish and hot. The venom was taking it's toll on him and it felt like something was sucking away whatever energy he had left to fight.  She retied him with web and repeated the process with his other leg until he lay naked before her, breathing hard and erratic, limbs spread and completely exposed.  He felt like he was going to pass out.

She leaned in close again, and this time, instead of the multitude of spider eyes and fangs, her face looked human.  Dark eyes and soft parted lips. She caressed his face before grabbing his hair to stare into his eyes again, and he felt her _pull_ at his mind.

“Not what you want to see,” she said, and then there was a blurring of the air around her.  He blinked, and the next moment he was looking at an achingly familiar pair of blue eyes, framed by short tussled black hair and the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Her bare breasts and torso were replaced by a lithe sculpted chest. She had taken the image of _Dick_ from his mind.

“No!”  Jason lashed out as much as he could, tearing his face from her hands. “You don't get to do that!  You can't take his face, and… and…..”   He was at a loss for words.   _God, what the fuck did she want?_

She grabbed his hair again, still wearing Dick’s face and forced him to look her in the eye.  He felt her _pulling_ at his mind again and a memory overtook him -- earlier, before he and Dick had suited up. They were having dinner. And before that, they had had sex.  He had let Dick take control and push them both into climax.

“Stop it!” Jason cried out. “You fucking bitch!”  The memory was _his_ and _Dick’s_.   It wasn’t meant to be shared outside of the two of them.  It was private. Sacred even. Every intimate moment with Dick was _precious_ to him.  He mustered every ounce of will he could find and pushed back at the violation in his mind, screaming a slew of curses at the same time.

It seemed to work, if only for a second, and she flinched back as if burned.  She retaliated however, and grabbed his throat with her claws, cutting off his air momentarily and stuffing something into his mouth. It was a wad of silk.  She jammed it down his throat until he was gagging, and then wound some more threads around his head and over his mouth to keep it in place.  He roared in protest, but he was finding it even more difficult to breath now.  He tried to calm his frantically beating heart, tried to suck in enough of the already thin air through his nose.

He felt her probing in his mind again, replaying the earlier scene where he had taken Dick against the wall on the couch.  She moved one of her human hands down to fondle between his legs, and he felt himself stir at the memory of the feel of Dick surrounding his cock, his wanton face, the way he had kissed his mouth.  He was immersed in the memory and all the emotions that were tied into it.  It wasn’t just sex. It had never been just physical release between them.  The sex had been rigorous, but they had _made love_.  

Against his will, he felt his body reacting to the memory and felt himself climax into her stroking hand.  He pulled at the restraints with a sob, pushed back again at the presence in his mind, but she was relentless. She pushed forward with the memory, to where afterwards he had held Dick against his chest.  Felt his beating heart. Felt how much he loved him.

She abruptly withdrew, and Jason was left reeling as he was thrown back into reality.  The visage of Dick was gone and she had reverted back to her spider face, but her eyes were wet with tears.  She wasn't just sobbing, she was wailing and staring blankly upward.  Lost in her own memory.  Jason didn't know how, but he could feel it -- she was remembering someone she had loved as well.

She opened her mouth, fangs protracted and let out an anguished scream before collapsing on top of him.  She curled into his chest, weeping, and all Jason could do was lay there in utter bewilderment and shock, trying to stifle his own shaking reaction to his own violation at her hands. Tried to breath through his nose as he felt the weight of her and the wetness of tears on his bare skin.  He had stopped struggling, unsure of what to do.  He was still tied naked and spreadeagled, his own spend cooling on his belly, gagged and struggling for breath.  She had touched him and violated his body and mind, inserting herself into his most intimate of memories, and yet at the same time he felt an odd sort of pity for her.  Her pain and grief so palpable Jason could feel it as sobs continued to wrack her frame, jarring his shoulder as she clutched at him. It sent small stabs of pain through him, and he tried to hold himself as still as possible.

It seemed to go on forever, and he felt his vision growing hazy and his limbs numb as he continued to breath heavily.  Instead of hot and feverish, he was now growing cold.  A shiver ran through him, and he felt her weight lift off his chest.  There was a shuffling of movement around him, and suddenly he felt the tension pulling at his limbs relax. She had cut his bindings.  He curled inward on his side, too weak to do anything else.

He lay there and closed his eyes.  

Later, he wasn't sure how long, he felt himself being lifted.  Something rough grazed against the side of his face and the threads of web holding the gag in place was removed.  He coughed, worked his jaw to spit the wad of silk out. It was all he could do to finally take in a deep breath. His shoulder and arm throbbed as he was lifted and moved, he didn't know where.  Something was pressed against his mouth, and he made to turn away.

“Drink.”  The spider woman insisted.

Warm liquid poured into his mouth and he couldn't help but swallow. His throat was parched.  Whatever it was it tasted faintly herbal. Some kind of tea.

He pushed weakly at her, realizing as he did so that she was cradling him in her arms.

“The venom will pass,” he heard her say.  “You will recover.”  

He was lowered to the ground.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. It was so soft he almost missed it.  There was a faint clacking sound that retreated, and he was alone again.

He drifted off after that.  It was a dreamless and fitful sleep, and it was cold and dark.  He half woke to feel himself being moved again, pushed into something smooth and soft, like silk….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jason blinked open his eyes to see a faint spot of light coming from some kind of hole.  Wait no, it was an opening several yards away, he realized as wakefulness fully set in.   A quick check of himself revealed that he was still nude.  His whole body was aching and sore, his shoulder was stiff and his arm still throbbing, but he had his full mental faculties again.  It seemed the spider woman had been telling the truth. The venom had probably run its course.

He quickly sat up only to bounce his head off a low ceiling. Fuck. That hurt, but even more disturbing was the fact that he was enclosed in a small space.  He took a few breaths -- the air was still thin and his pulse was starting to quicken in rising panic again.  He needed to get out of wherever this was.  The tight space was extremely disconcerting, and what that spider woman had done to him… he couldn’t let that happen again.  His best option was to find some way to escape.

He rolled onto his stomach and crawled with his uninjured arm towards the faint glow of light.  He had been lying in some sort of cushioned gauzy web.  Silky cloth tangled around him as he fumbled toward the opening. Thankfully, it widened as he approached and the opening was larger than he thought.  Probably large enough for the spider, so plenty large enough for him to get out.

He tentatively climbed out into a slightly larger passage, this one lighted by a cool glow from somewhere above. He stepped out and tested his balance, scanning for signs of the spider.  His footing was sound and there were no signs of anyone other than himself.  

He grabbed the cloth that had tangled around his legs and tied it around his waist, wincing as he put more stress on his bad arm.  He paused briefly to scan his surroundings -- the walls and floor were a grainy wood, smoothed and polished as if from long use.  He was still in the hollow tree it seemed.

He padded quietly down the passage until he reached a slotted opening, like a window.  It was too small for him to fit through, but big enough for him to examine the landscape and figure out where he was.

Or not.

One look out the window told him he _wasn't in Kansas_ anymore, so to speak. Or anywhere on Earth for that matter.  There were trees the size of _skyscrapers_.  Larger even.  He was inside one of them apparently, and he could count a dozen or so growing out of a flat and barren landscape. They were set miles apart, and they reached far into the sky -- a stormy gray mass of churning clouds.  But what was even stranger was that where the branches spread out there were literally _cracks_ in the sky, as if the churning clouds were merely a projected image upon a crumbling white ceiling. As if the trees themselves were breaking apart that very ceiling with the pressure of its gnarled limbs.

He had no idea how the fucking hell he was going to get out of here.

There was a clacking sound behind him and Jason whipped around to see the spider at the end of the passageway.  He called forth the All-Blades, and this time they worked.  Or at least one of them did.  The fracture and throbbing shoulder left his other arm completely useless in a fight. Still, he would give it all he had, or die trying.

The spider woman cocked her head slightly, let out that horrible chittering sound before speaking.  “Do not fight.”

“Sure. Then take me back to Gotham.”  Jason doubted it would be that easy, but he figured he might as well throw it out there.  She had already wiped the floor with him in a fight, and he didn't have a whole lot of options other than making a run for it. In his current state and in a completely foreign land, they both knew he wouldn't get very far.  

“No.  You will help me.”  She lunged forward, a bony sawtoothed leg aiming straight for him.  Jason moved to block, bringing his All-Blade up to deflect.  It should have been enough to redirect her blow, but there was a blurring around her, and his All-Blade didn't even connect. It passed right through her leg as if he was just cutting through air.  She had gone out of phase again.

He felt a force impact his chest, and he looked down to see she had speared him through the heart.  He collapsed onto his knees, his vision  clouding, but instead of darkness overtaking him, he saw something. A memory. _Her_ memory.

 

_There was another spider.  A male.  Dark hair falling across his shoulders and a similar array of bulging spider eyes.  He was her companion, her lover, and even from a distance she could feel his beating heart.  It matched her own.  They were linked.  Entwined.  He was in the midst of an intimate moment with a third -- another being in the throes passion -- and she was sharing in the ecstasy through her link with her companion. They were feeding off him.  He was their prey, snared in their web of illusions, and cut off from the psyche of his normal dreams so they could draw the powerful energies of his fantasies into their own bones._

_It was what they did to survive. They ate small animals and fruits, but they needed to feed on the energies of other sentient beings to truly sustain themselves.  They pulled their essence from the very energy of emotions -- it was what allowed them to build the abilities of their hard shells. It was what fed their eggs._

_Eggs…._

_In her memory, she turned to glance behind her, and on her back she carried a white silk sac.  Inside there was a mass of soft eggs, gently pulsing with life.  There was a feeling of joy and immense love.  They were her children._

_She turned back to her companion, he had finished with their prey, who lay asleep and sated in a pile of refuse on the ground.  They would leave him now, and he would reconnect with the psyche of his world. He would wake later, likely confused, but without the memory of what had been taken from him._

_Her companion was walking in front of her now,  making a slashing motion with his front legs, cutting into the ground it seemed.  No….  He was cutting through the_ planes -- _cutting the fabric of reality so they could walk along the seams between realms.  They had done this numerous times before, hunting for the spark of desire that would allow them to take advantage of their prey._

_She felt it first, another hungering power from a realm below them.  It was strong, but if they could take it, it would be enough to give life to their children._

_They found him, a strange man alone in a lower plane.  There was nothing here, no sun, no light, just an endless expanse of gray dust and dusk.  She knew there was something wrong, but he had so much power….  Her companion approached, taking the form of his desire, but it wasn't right -- he appeared as a bloody disfigured child… no.  This was no prey. It wasn't even a man, it was a shell.  Something else that had taken root inside the body.  Something dark._

_An unseen force ripped her lover from the ground, tossing him into the air and slamming him back down. He fought back against the unseen force to no avail.  Her lover was strong, but this thing was stronger.  It ripped a leg from her lover’s body as he flailed.  She tried to help him, but there was more at stake -- she had to protect the eggs._

_She watched in horror as he was torn apart before her.  His screams echoing her own. Terror, anguish, excruciating pain -- everything he felt echoed through her heart.  It burned into her memory.  It permeated her bones._

_She fled, tearing a hole out of the realm, running along the seams to escape, but something caught up to her.  She tried in vain to fight it off, but she couldn't see it.  Them. There were many of them, she could feel their vicious glee resonating in her bones as they began tormenting her._

_The egg sac was torn from her back, tossed to the ground. And, oh god, something stomped on them!  Crushing them under a heavy weight. She felt the pulsing life suddenly stop. The eggs, her children, had been obliterated._

_She screamed, the pain so violent, the hole in her heart so agonizing…._

 

There was a forceful wrenching and Jason suddenly came back to himself.  She had withdrawn her leg from his chest, and he heard screaming.  Jason realized it was his own voice that rang in his ears.

He looked down at his chest, expecting to see a gaping wound, but there was nothing.  No wound, no blood. Nothing. He was intact, but he was trembling violently, tears pouring from his face in abject grief.  He was feeling _her_ grief.

He collapsed forward, leaning on his good arm, overwhelmed with depthless despair and a black rage.  This was what _she_ had felt.  It was what she was _still_ feeling.  He could tell the memory was old.  Decades at least, maybe more, but the pain of it was still as fresh and raw as if it had happened yesterday.  It was so powerful it had driven her _mad_.

Jason could understand that. He understood that overpowering rage could drive one to do desperate things.  Still, he felt anger at the violation she inflicted on him.  It was no excuse for what she had done.  He knew what it was that she had tried to do -- she had wanted to feed on him, and that she _needed_ to feel intimacy again, but she had been intentionally cruel and vicious with him.

Through the forced mind link, he knew that their feedings off other beings normally involved _seduction_ \-- they mirrored the forms of what their prey desired.  Though manipulative, it allowed them to build their bones not on pain, but on  pleasure, and they would let their prey go unharmed and oblivious to what had been done to them.  However, what she had done to Jason had been forceful and brutal. There was no excuse for the outright violation.  She had broken through his defenses and _mind-raped_ him.  Twice now.

There was a movement toward him again, another bony leg reaching out to touch him.

“Don't.”  He batted her away.  An almost ridiculous notion given how easily she could overpower him.  He huddled into himself pathetically, feeling too vulnerable, and tried to make sense of his situation.  Her actions seemed driven by her erratic emotions rather than any premeditated intent to torture him.  At the same time, she needed something from him, but _why_?

And then it clicked. She couldn't see those things that attacked, but _he_ could.  He had seen one in the railway station, wielding the blade -- the leg -- of her lover, and Jason had done something that she couldn't.  He had defeated one with his All-Blades, and she had seen it through the bones of her lover somehow. And now she wanted to use Jason to get _revenge_.

She had taken Jason and tried to break him to her will, but in the process something had changed.  He wasn't sure if it had something to do with what she had seen in his mind, but she was now remorseful for what she had done.

“Your language is so limited.”  She had backed away, but was still reading him apparently.  She let out a series of fast clicks that petered out into a slow cadence.  That _almost_ sounded like an apology.

“Yeah, well so’s yours,” Jason scoffed, though it sounded more like a sniffle than the harsh jab he had intended.  “Can't understand your fucking clicking at all.”

“I had to show you. You have to understand.”

No.  He didn’t _have_ to do anything of the sort, but….. _God,_ he didn’t want to, but he did actually understand.  He didn’t forgive her, but he knew what things despair and rage could do to a broken mind.  He had been the same not too long ago.  He raised his eyes to finally look at her.

“You will help me?”  She rasped out. There were tears on her face too, Jason saw.

He couldn't fucking believe it.  After what she did to him.  After she _violated_ him.  Now she wanted his agreement?   _Now_ she wanted his consent?

He didn't like it and he sure as hell still didn't like _her_ , but even so, he didn't have a lot of options at the moment. Even if he could really kill those things when she couldn't, she still held all the power here.  He didn't know where he was or how to get home, and even if he disagreed, he knew she would do everything she could to force him.  She was _crazy_ , and the best he could do was play along until he could find some way of extricating himself.

But... in that way that his own mind and emotions seemed to consistently screw him over, for some reason he found he _empathized_ for her.  Perhaps it was the mind link or some kind of ongoing manipulation on her part, Jason couldn't tell, but he couldn't bring himself to entirely hate her for what she had done.  

And those things that had murdered her family, and then murdered the children in Crime Alley -- they had to be _destroyed_.  That was for certain.   Jason would end every last one of them.

_Shit_ , he was so going to regret this.  “Yes, I’ll help you kill those fuckers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that creepy and twisted enough? I sure hope so. :)  
> In Japanese mythology, the jorogumo were spider yokai that would try to seduce men by impersonating beautiful women, and then lead them to their death by feeding them to her spider children, or something to that effect. In most stories they were evil as such, but some stories they were also protectors and saviours.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Appearance by John Constantine and Zatanna, the two heavyweights of DCs current magical side of things. They will mostly be supporting characters though. It's hard to have a story like this without at least referencing the mage world of DC, especially since Hellblazer was such a long running series of Vertigo, along with The Sandman

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

Back at the railway tunnels, Dick retraced the steps he and Jason had taken earlier that evening, outlining in a play-by-play everything he remembered to Bruce.  He felt strangely numb as he described the earlier events that had led to the devastating reality of Jason's abduction.  It was too surreal, and it seemed like the only way he could handle it was by pushing the tide of emotions that threatened to break him far into the back of his mind. He had to focus.  The most important thing right now was looking for clues that could help them find Jason.

They proceeded cautiously, Bruce leaving a trail of flares as they went deeper into the tunnel.  Jason hadn’t mentioned seeing more than one demon lurking in the shadows, but that didn’t mean there couldn't be more.  All appeared to be quiet however, as they reached the first of the bodies of the children.

Bruce knelt again to take samples, his jaw set in a hard line that Dick recognized as suppressed anger.  Outwardly Bruce, or rather _Batman_ , seemed his normal self -- hard, driven, menacing, resolute -- but Dick could see the undercurrent of a different sort of tension. He wasn't as fastidious as he normally was with a crime scene.  Sure, he was taking samples and scanning the area, giving the dead children their due course, but he was triaging. Spending more time where there was more recent activity -- where there were more likely clues to lead them to Jason.  He was _worried_.  And the glances he was giving Dick were longer than a normal passing assessment. He was looking for a reason to take Dick off the field. He wanted Dick to go home.

Dick squared himself up.  His wounds _did_ sting, and he had a nasty gash that was still seeping blood on his leg where he had too hastily cut himself free of the web.  However, he wasn’t going to give Bruce an opening if he could help it.  

They continued further back into the tunnels. Dick hadn’t made it this far down earlier -- Jason had them turned and running from the invisible demon at this point -- but now he could see a strange muddy brown script painted on the walls.  Bruce was again taking samples, but Dick didn't need a lab to tell him that it had been written in blood. The blood from the children.

“Do you recognize any of this?” Dick asked, as Bruce scrutinized the script.

“I'm not certain yet,” Bruce said tentatively, “but it matches the pattern in certain arcane texts I’ve seen.”

They moved around the bend in the tunnel where Jason had originally seen the demon lurking, and found that an expanse of the rails had been ripped from the concrete floor.  In it's place was a large circle filled with the strange occult script that looked like it had been scorched into the floor.  There was a star in the center -- a pentacle.

“Hullo?  Anyone down here?”  A voice, thick with Liverpudlian inflection, echoed out from the tunnel behind them.  Bruce had been kneeling close to the pentacle, but stood to meet their new visitor.

“Where’s Zatanna?”  Bruce grunted, clearly not entirely pleased with the newcomer.  He was tall with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, maybe had a few inches on Dick, and was lean but not slight. He was wearing a shirt and tie, and a long brown trench coat. Dick recognized him, though he doubted the recognition would be returned.  John Constantine.

“Zee’s on her way.” Constantine pulled a pack of cigarettes from somewhere under his jacket and shook one out. “Got caught up in some kinda wizard war shite.”  He brought the cigarette to his lips, flipped a finger to light the end and took a long drag.

The smoke hit Dick with an unexpected pang of worry again.  He hated it when Jason smoked, but he had gotten used to the lingering smell that clung to his clothes and the taste of nicotine on his tongue.  The smell of it now felt like a painful reminder that Jason wasn't there.

“Can you put that out?  Please.”  It came out more irritated than Dick had wanted to let on, but his nerves were fried.

“Yeesh,” Constantine arched a brow. “What crawled up your arse and died?”

“It can contaminate the crime scene.”  Thankfully,  Bruce intervened.  “Will you help us or not?  Zatanna mentioned she wasn't sure you would come.”

“Sure mate. Zee called in a favor, so I’m here.”  Constantine took a final puff before dropping his cigarette to the floor to stamp it out, completely unphased by Batman’s glaring look.  “Demons aren't really her cuppa tea anyway,” he added flippantly.

His demeanor took a noticeably different tone however, when he saw the bodies of the children.  He proceeded to inspect the script on the walls and the complicated pentacle diagram that took up the far end of the tunnel.  He paused, brows furrowed and scowling, before turning back to Dick.

“Your mate, what kind of bloke is he?  Magus?  Exorcist?  What's he do?”

“No. Nothing like that,” Dick replied.  “He usually uh, just shoots people.”

“Come on, spit it out,” Constantine pressed. “There's something else.”

“He uh… sometimes has magic swords?  I don't know a lot about them,” Dick explained. It was the truth. Neither he nor Bruce had been able to get a full explanation out of Jason. Their probing was usually met with cagey responses, if not outright refusal and anger.  They did know it had to do with his training with the All-Caste, but exactly how he got them and what made them work was still unexplained.  And then there was everything that had happened with the Endless.  Dick didn't even know where to begin to explain that.

Constantine noted his hesitation, and instead turned to Bruce for a full explanation.

“He has some magical abilities, but he doesn't use them often,” Bruce said succinctly.  “He was trained by an ancient assassins guild.”   

Constantine still looked skeptical. “Tell me exactly what went on down here.”

Dick relayed the story again, from the moment the stepped foot into the tunnels, how they had been attacked by the demon and then the spider, and stopping at when Dick had touched the bone shard.

Constantine took it in as he stared at the occult symbols in the tunnel. “No. Something's not adding up. This here’s some deep shit.  I’ve seen these things before, nearly ripped me to pieces some years back in London.  Things like this usually need to be properly summoned.  Either that or there's a more powerful demon or a host to anchor them here.  Takes a lot of power to manifest and come up from the lower planes.”  He was shaking his head, pulling another cigarette from his coat.  “If your mate was able to see this type of evil, and banish it without being one of the _consecrated_ , he's got more than just ‘ _some_ ’ magical abilities.”

He flicked his finger to light his cigarette again before continuing. “Don’t even get me started on the spider bitch, but now lemme ask again, what _aren't_ you telling me?”

Dick looked to Bruce. He hadn't brought up the Endless either. He wasn't sure how much he should say.  He knew by reputation that Constantine generally worked on the side of good, as in he wasn’t using his abilities to take over the world, but he skirted the edges of what was acceptable.  His means didn’t always justify the ends, and he was also extremely self-serving and couldn't be trusted to not use information for his own purposes.  They needed to find Jason, but telling him that Jason had been entangled with the Endless could be a danger as well.

There was too long of an awkward pause, and the silence brought into awareness the aches and stings of Dick’s various injuries. He was tired, the cut on his leg was still seeping and probably needed stitches, his back felt crusty from the dried blood… Dick suddenly felt a little faint. He put a hand to the wall for balance, accidentally touching the occult script with his injured hand.

The script started to glow. Oops.

There was a low rumble at the end of the tunnel.  Constantine turned to face the scorched pentacle on the ground, eyes widening.

“Oh for chrissakes!”  He moved his hands in an arc, mumbling an incantation Dick couldn't quite understand. At his side, Bruce had taken a ready position as well.

Constantine finished his incantation and shot a flash of light from his hands at the pentacle.  It glowed briefly, but then faded. The rumbling increased, and Constantine backed away.

“Too late!  It's coming through!”  Another incantation and Constantine was throwing some kind of glowing sigil up, holding an unseen force back.  There was a sound of a blunt force, and the sigil dissipated, throwing Constantine against the tunnel wall.  “Bollocks, this thing is strong.”   

Bruce moved to help him up, and whatever it was, Dick could hear it advancing.  Towards _him_.  

Constantine was in front of him suddenly, heading off the unseen demon. He was holding his palms facing together, a glow of energy building between them.  He turned his head briefly towards Bruce, “Get the kid outta here!  It smells blood!  Let me deal with this.”

Dick was instantly resentful.  “Don’t call me kid--!” he started, but Bruce grabbed his arm and pulled him into retreat.

“He’s right.  You shouldn't be here.”

Dick yanked his arm from his grip.  “No, I’m not leaving!”

“Sod it!”  A yell from Constantine again.  He had a hand up powering another sigil, a larger one that spanned the diameter of the tunnel.  “I can't deal with you bloody fools at the same time!”  He shot a bolt of something at them with his other hand. Dick dove out of the way and he saw Bruce do the same, but Dick stumbled slightly.  His leg with the bad cut didn't take his weight like he had anticipated and his response was a little too slow.  He felt something strike him, and then he was hurtling through a strange vortex.  A dizzying flash of colors and then he landed hard on solid ground.

He was only able to lift his head slightly, vision spinning and unfocused, to see a set of polished black oxfords approach before he passed out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He woke later to the quiet beep of a medical monitor and the utilitarian setting of a med bay.  He knew instantly where he was -- the Bat Cave -- if the slim figure of Alfred in his morning jacket standing by the bed wasn’t already a dead giveaway.

He sat up slowly, noting the pull of bandages across his back.  A quick check of himself revealed more bandages on the cuts of his hands as well, and someone -- presumably Alfred -- had stitched the deeper gash in his leg.

Said butler merely looked on archly as Dick checked himself over.  A mild disapproval mixed with gentle concern.

“I suppose I’m wasting my breath if I say you should rest, Master Dick.”

“Sorry Alfred,” Dick said sheepishly.  “Jason hasn't been found?  Where’s Bruce?”

“Master Bruce is still at the railway station, with that horrible excuse for an Englishman.”  The latter remark was full of obvious disdain.  “He nearly killed you sending you here the way he did.  Fortunately, Zatanna has made an appearance. Last I heard they are working on trying a locator spell for Master Jason.”

“Have they any leads at all?  How long has it been?”  Dick glanced around for a clock, but Alfred had removed them for this very reason.

“Several hours,” Damian suddenly appeared at the doorway to the med bay.  “I'm glad you are alright, Richard.”  He moved next to the bed and plopped himself in the closest chair, patting Dick’s hand gently before pulling his chart to review his vitals.

Tim had followed Damian in as well, and now stood at the foot of the bed.  “Dick, how are you feeling?”

“I’ll be fine when we find Jay,” Dick replied.  He scooted to the edge of the bed to stand.  “What have we figured out so far?”

“Not much,” Tim replied, almost apologetically.  “There’s a lot out there about demonology, but we probably couldn't get more of an expert in this than we already have with John Constantine.  As for the spider woman, all I've got are a bunch of unsubstantiated legends from Japan.”  Dick could tell he was blaming himself again for not having enough intel, even though Tim had probably stretched their resources and run the most exhaustive search possible.  

“We’ve asked Raven to see what she can figure out too,” Tim continued.  “She knows a lot about the demonic realms, but there's a lot of them, and so far she hasn't been successful.”

Dick put a hand out to clasp Tim’s shoulder.  Next to himself, Tim was the closest of them to Jason. In fact, Jason opened up to Tim even more than he did with Dick in a lot of cases.  Jason's disappearance was affecting him as much as it did Dick.

“We’ll find him,” Dick assured, though he said it to convince himself as much as he did Tim.  

He made his way out of the med bay and into the spare costume area.  Dick had been stripped down to his briefs in order for Alfred to patch him up, and now he needed to suit up and re-supply.  He needed to get back to the railway tunnels as soon as possible.

“Richard, what do you think you're doing?”  Damian had moved to block his path, arms crossed and face twisted into a mini bat-glare.

“Suiting up.  I'm going back out.”

“No.  We are under strict orders from father to keep you here,” Damian decreed.  “You are injured, and you have no expertise in this area. There isn't much you can do if you go out there.”

“I'm not going to just sit around when who knows what could be happening to Jason!”  Dick retorted.  He pushed past Damian toward the changing area.

“You're not going, Richard.”  Damian was in front of him again. “I will fight you if I have to!”  

Dick found it almost comical. Damian was so resolute and determined -- he was such a mini-bat -- but even so, Dick wasn't going to let anyone stop him from doing everything he could to find Jason.

“Let's not let it get to that.”  It was Tim this time from behind him.  “We _will_ find Jason, but you can't go until we know more about what's going on.”  He had his arms crossed and was standing squarely as well.  Tim wasn't as tall or broad as any of the older bats, yet, but he still knew how to look his most imposing.  

“The spider demon took Jason, but it attacked both of you.  If you go out there we run the risk of losing you too,” Tim went on, but his tone had changed to imploring.  “Not again. Please don't make this harder than it already is, Dick.”

Dick’s resolve wavered. _Double-teaming little imps!_

His little brothers were worried about him.  He couldn't rule out the possibility that whatever had taken Jason could come back for him too.  He appreciated their concern, and what they were saying made sense.  Really, what could he do if he went back to the tunnels?  He couldn't fight any of the invisible demons that showed up, he couldn't cast any spells or decipher any occult sigils.  They already had the most powerful magic users and experts known to them looking into it…. Still, there had to be _something_ he could do for Jason.  Yes… deep down, somehow, he _knew_ he _had_ to be there.  He couldn’t explain it, but he just knew they wouldn't be able to get Jason back without him.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said before he sprang into action.  He launched himself over Damian to land behind him, swiping his legs out to knock the boy off his feet.  Damian reacted quickly and jumped out of the way, but it was enough to give Dick an opening to charge toward the changing area where he kept his spare suits and supplies.

The two younger bats were barreling after him.  Dick dodged a batarang from Damian that exploded in front of him, forcing him to veer to the side.  Tim was already flanking him, steering him back towards the entrance to the manor and away from the vehicles.  Dick knew they wouldn't hurt him, not really, but they could and _would_ incapacitate him if he wasn't fast on his feet, especially if they were working together.  He never expected Tim and Damian to team up voluntarily like this. Go figure that all it took was the threat of Dick bumbling headlong and unprepared into the hands of demons for them to put aside their differences.

Tim threw a net out in an attempt to snare him, but even mildly injured as he was, Dick was still the fastest and most agile out of all of them.  He not only dodged the net, but he grabbed its center once it lost momentum. He then launched himself back at Tim, body slamming him to knock him off balance.  He then swung the younger bat right at Damian, who had been approaching from the other side. The two boys landed in a sprawl of limbs, and Dick threw the net over them both.

“Drake, you imbecile!”  Damian was yelling.  Looked like the partnership between his little brothers was fading fast.  Dick lamented, but it gave him enough time to sprint back into the changing area.

A set of iron grills suddenly came up just as soon as Dick stepped foot into the changing room, sealing off the exits and trapping him inside.  Shit.  Now Alfred was in on it too -- he had called a lockdown on the cave.  Nevertheless, he threw on a spare costume, grabbed another set of escrima, and stuffed the few pockets he had with supplies.  As he did so, a voice spoke up from behind him.

“Your family is giving you trouble.”  A gray mist coalesced into the form of Essence.  She had a slightly taunting smirk on her face.  It seemed she found the situation slightly amusing.

“You!”  Dick exclaimed in surprise.  “Did you find Jay?”

“Unfortunately no,” Essence said, switching to a serious tone, “but it seems you have had a conversation with the Lord Dream while you were unconscious.”

Dick shook his head, perplexed.  He didn't remember anything of the sort, but that didn't mean it didn't happen.  He had read the files from before, and there were several instances where several of them, including Bruce, would just _know_. He couldn't explain it, but he felt that way now -- he _knew_ that he was needed in order to find Jason.  Perhaps it was true, and he did have a conversation with the Lord of the Dream when he was unconscious?

“I was told you would not remember,” Essence confirmed.  “I have been instructed to take you back to the tunnels.”

“Good, exactly where I need to go,” Dick affirmed, as he stashed one last set of electromagnetic disruptors in a spare thigh strap he had found.  “And then what?”

“And then we await further instruction,” Essence said simply.  She still had that slightly pissed off attitude toward Dick, but she was here to help him, so he didn't argue.  She waved a hand, and a portal opened.

Behind him, he could hear Damian yelling for Alfred to release the lockdown.  They had noted Essence’s presence apparently, and he turned to see Tim running up to the grilled bars.  

“Wait!” Tim yelled.  He grasped a hold of the locked bars, put an arm through in a staying motion.  “Dick!  Fine. You win.  You're going and you're not letting us go with you. I get it, but take these.”  He handed a small bag with a shoulder strap through the bars.

“They're Nth metal infused batarangs,” Tim explained.  "It's all we have.  Just find Jason.  And be careful.”  

“Thanks Tim.  I’ll bring him back,” Dick nodded.  “Tell D and Alfred I’ll see them when I get back.”  And with that he stepped through.

Dick half expected to be tossed through some kind of vortex like a ragdoll, as he had been when Constantine had sent him back to the cave.  However, Essence’s portals were much tamer, and he made it through with no ill effects.  He was thankful for that at the very least.  He had been patched up by Alfred, but he was still sore and aching.  He didn't need another possible concussion on top of that.  

They arrived at the entrance to the railway station, and Dick was slightly surprised to see that though it was overcast, it was now about mid day.  He had been unconscious longer than he thought, and he felt a surging rush of anxiety again as he realized that every ticking hour meant that they were further away from finding Jason.  

Dick paused to center himself with a few breaths before leading the way down a long set of stairs to the platform where Bruce, Constantine, and now Zatanna had gathered.  They had a bone shard, the one that Dick had picked up and Bruce had stowed away, lying on the ground in the center of a sigil.   Dick hadn't bothered to hide his approach, lest he get accidentally blasted by a bolt of magic, so the three of them were already standing and prepared for a hostile visitor when Dick came into view.  

“What are you doing here?”  Bruce said disapprovingly and was instantly marching towards him.  He stopped however, when he saw Essence trail in behind him, and turned to address her.  “You have news?”

“Yes and no,” she answered, lowering herself to stand on the platform.  “I was not successful tracing him with his jacket, but I was instructed to wait for Tethys here.”

“And Nightwing. Why is he here?”

“I was told he was essential.”

Behind them, Zatanna and Constantine were looking on curiously.  Dick shot Constantine as much of a dirty look as he could muster, and nodded to Zatanna in acknowledgement. He hadn't ever worked with her directly, but Bruce trusted her, and he knew her by reputation.

Essence simply ignored them however, and continued speaking with Bruce.  “The bone shards, _he_ asked for them.  I am not sure why.”  She was talking around actually naming the Lord of the Dream apparently, but whether it was because she had been instructed not to, or if she simply didn't trust the other two magic-wielders of their cohort, Dick could only guess.  

“I have a feeling,” she went on speaking to Bruce, “that you and I are not going to like what is coming.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?  Who are you?”  Zatanna stepped forward, sizing up Essence with her gaze.

“She's an ally of Jason's” Bruce deflected.  Zatanna wasn’t pleased, but she followed Bruce’s lead and let it drop.  He turned back to Essence.  “We’ve tried using the bone shard to locate him, but neither Zatanna nor Constantine can hold it for long enough.  The locator spells aren't working either.  I've retrieved more personal effects, but they have been ineffective.”

Dick looked at the floor of the platform where there were several sets of sigils drawn in chalk.  There were a few pictures scattered on the floor, both of Jason as the Red Hood as well as of him unmasked.  There was a dog-eared book, a spare helmet, and a gun as well.  It looked like Bruce had raided their apartment.

Somewhere along the way Bruce had given up Jason's real identity, Dick noted.  It made sense given their situation.  Zatanna already knew who they were, and it followed that the more personal they could get with Jason the more easily they should be able to find him.  

Essence had started inspecting the sigils, when a white raven, Tethys, suddenly flew down into the station.  She landed on an outstretched arm that Essence offered upon her appearance.  

“I'm sorry, Essence,” the bird spoke softly, “I know you do not like him, but the Master insisted this was the only way.”   Just then, a set of heavy footsteps began to echo as someone started to slowly descend the stairs into the station.

Essence shot a glance at Bruce, and he responded with a nod -- there was some kind of mutual understanding shared between them -- and he proceeded to glare hard at the entrance to the station with a snarl on his lips.

Behind him, Dick saw Zatanna and Constantine tense as the newcomer continued down the stairs, still out of view, but coming closer.

“Christ,” muttered Constantine.  “That energy….”  He turned to Bruce, completely aghast.  “What the bloody hell is your boy mixed up with?”

“It's not what, but _who_ ,” Bruce said through gritted teeth.

Finally, a man descended the last few steps to stand on the platform.  He was large and powerfully built with pale hair, wearing a deceptively unassuming t-shirt and jeans.  He had on a pair of dark sunglasses, and he was grinning a wide and menacing smile.  Dick had only ever seen him once, but he knew instantly who he was.  The Corinthian.

“Oh good, you're all here.” The Corinthian spoke, as he lifted his hand to remove the sunglasses.  He pushed them back to sit atop of his head, revealing two sets of horrific toothy maws in place of his eyes.  

He clapped his hands together, grinning again with all three of his mouths.  “Let's get this show started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- The Corinthian returns!  
> \-- You notice how everyone is constantly blacking out in my fics? If this were real, I would be worried about traumatic brain injury, but this is comic fanfic, so they’re all going to be fine!  
> \-- John knew who Dick was in the last Grayson annual, but Dick used his hypnos implant to erase his memory, along with a few others, including Harley Quinn  
> \-- I am obviously ignoring the current Rebirth situation in which everyone thinks Tim is dead, and so also ignoring the fact that Damian has taken over the Teen Titans and being this continuity’s key contact with Raven. So I'm going with Tim kind of somewhere in between leaving the Teen Titans and starting his role with Bruce in the Rebirth Detective Comics.  
> \-- As far as I know, Dick and Zatanna have never worked together in current continuity. I know they were a thing in Young Justice, though it would make for an awkward love triangle in comics given she's meant to be Bruce’s love interest.  
> \-- More on what John Constantine knows in a later chapter. Both he and Zatanna will be mostly minor characters in this though.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here you go. Another chapter! I'm falling a little behind, time is just running away from me during the week... but still chugging along. Hope you enjoy!

~~~~~ Jason ~~~~~

_Yes, I’ll help you kill those fuckers._

True enough to his own prediction, Jason immediately regretted uttering those words. What the hell was he even thinking?  He was in no condition to fight off the psychotic spider-bitch let alone a horde of demons.  Their latest altercation had ended embarrassingly with Jason a blubbering mess of tears.   Afterwards, whatever psychic attack she had inflicted on him had left him too physically and emotionally drained to even stand up, let alone call his All-Blades again.  He ended up kicking at her weakly, then crawling away when it was obvious that it was doing little to deter her.  He ended up huddled miserably in a far corner of the dark passageway.

For once, the spider didn't move to restrain him, but she hovered around him, all clacking legs and clicks.

“You are weak.  You cannot fight like this,” she finally said.

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.  Maybe it's because _someone_ kidnapped me, injected me with venom, and then stabbed me with their goddamned psychic leg.”

She was silent for a while, and Jason waited her out.  Trying to get his bearings enough to stand.   

“Infection.  This will not do.”  She finally broke the silence.  “I will take you to the springs.”  She moved to grab him, and Jason shrank away, but one jab at his fractured arm had his vision blacking out and him yelping in pain.  She took his momentary disorientation as an opportunity to lift him with her legs.  She was surprisingly gentle, even with her sharp claws and the bony sawtoothed edges.   She moved through a doorway that opened into a long, dark vertical shaft, clutched him to her torso and lept down.

“Shit!” Jason gasped at the sudden freefall, but their descent gradually slowed.  They were hanging from a line of web she had trailing behind her.  Jason _did not_ want to think about where all these threads of web came from.  He also didn't want to fall to his death in some hole in a giant tree, so he let her grip him until they reached the bottom.

She released him then, and Jason stumbled to the ground.  It was pitch black, and he couldn't see anything except a faint glow of light far above them.  There was some kind of tearing noise and he was shoved forward into a sliver of dim light, tumbling onto his side into a thick gray fog. He made to push himself up with his good arm, and looked down at the floor.  It looked like it was made out of some kind of fabric… a canvas of crisscrossing threads, thin and translucent like spiders web….  They were in the _seams_.

Bony claws grabbed at him again, another tearing noise and he was shoved forward once more to land on hard compacted dirt.  The transitions were too jarring, and Jason was suddenly nauseous.  He leaned over, dry heaving his empty stomach.  He hadn't eaten anything since he and Dick had left to investigate the Crime Alley railway station the night before.  

Shit. He recalled the memory of that evening.  The memory _she_ had forcefully invaded, and a prickle of ire joined the roiling in his belly.

“What the fuck was that?”  Jason managed to pull himself up into a sitting position to stare daggers at the spider.  She was standing before him, and she merely cocked her head, letting out a series of clicks and pointing over the ledge they were on.  They were somewhere outside and it was night, the sky almost an opaque black with twinkling pinpricks of starlight.  The constellations weren’t anything Jason recognized, so they were again on some unknown elseworld.  The air was temperate, almost warm, and Jason could make out the silhouette of rocky outcroppings and hills surrounding them on all sides.  He looked over the ledge the spider had pointed at, and saw there was something faintly glowing below.

“Oh, fuck no!”  There was a large bubbling pool of blue-tinged water.  Judging by the steam emanating from it, the water was warm, but it was all too reminiscent of the Lazarus Pits for his liking. There was no way he was getting into _that_ voluntarily.

“It will clean your wounds.”

“No.”  If Jason could stand on his own at that very moment, he would have dug his heels in _hard_.

She leaned in close again, clicking and chittering, and he felt her probing his mind.  It was like a growing pressure behind his eyes, but then she pulled away.   “I do not understand.  Your memories. There is so much damage.”

“You and me both,” Jason said bitterly.

“Even so, the water is nothing like those… _Lazarus Pits_ you remember,” she said, enunciating the words carefully.  Jason stifled a surge of resentment, he wished she would stop pulling things out of his damned head.

She moved to grab him, but Jason had anticipated, rolling out of the way as she reached for him.  However, her legs were long and her reach was far, and Jason's fractured arm limited his mobility.  She shuffled forward and was able to snag his leg.

She yanked him into the air and flung him bodily into the pool.  He hit the water face up, and promptly sank to the bottom as he let out a yell of surprise.  He thrashed, trying to keep his panic in check so he wouldn't drown.  Tried to focus on the fact that the water was blue, not green.  He kicked his legs, broke the surface of the water to gasp for air, and swam to the water's edge.  He reached his good arm out to grab the lip of the pool, when a sticky net of web was thrown over his hand and forearm, binding him to the stone edge.  He pulled at the web but it held firm. He couldn't get out of the water.

Jason turned to see the spider had immersed herself in the pool as well.  She was standing close by, neck deep in the water, her long dark hair flowing like a dark halo around her, watching him with her eight unblinking eyes.  

“Let me out!” he snapped.

“Do it yourself,” she bit back.  “Use your sword.”

Cutting through sticky web goo wasn’t what the All-Blades were meant for.  The ancient magic binding them to his soul reacted to magic and the presence of evil, and not necessarily in that order.  He noted that in the spider’s presence, though he was able to call them forth, he didn’t get the same tingling feeling, like an itch, that he would when something truly evil was in the vicinity.  He used to get that feeling around Essence, and when he had fought the Untitled.  The spider… it was as if the swords themselves weren’t even sure what to make of her.  He called one up in his good hand, trying to angle it to slice through the web without cutting off his own arm.   After a few unsuccessful attempts he gave up.  A short stubby butter knife may have been better than trying to wield a long energy blade in a way that wouldn't put out an eye.  Adding to that, he still felt weak from her psychic attack, and his dexterity at the moment was for shit.   He couldn't lift his other arm enough without immense pain either.  

He glanced back at the spider and saw she was still watching him, just out of his reach.  She was testing his abilities with the sword.  “Fuck you!”  He said in exasperation.  “You said this water would heal me.  Why is my arm still so fucked up?”

There was a twitch of her mouth, pulling a fang slightly to the side to make like a ghoulish smirk. “No.  The water _cleans_.  Erases infection.  But bone is too deep.”

“Fat lot of good that's going to do because it's gonna take _weeks_ for this to heal,” Jason scoffed.  A bone fracture was no joke, but he also wasn’t planning on sitting around for that long waiting for it to mend.  Especially not with the psycho-bitch spider for company.

“We will not wait. We will go shortly,” she said, nodding as if that constituted his agreement.

“Hang on,” Jason said incredulously, “you want to take on a horde of demons that you can't even see, with a single human with one functioning arm?”

“Yes,” she said simply.  “We cannot wait.  The Lord of the Dream seeks you out even now.  He protects you.”

“Yeah, well, I've got friends in high places,” Jason snarked, but he was honestly relieved.  He still couldn't really remember the details of what his full relationship was with the Endless, but he had nearly died for them.  If anyone owed him one, it was them.

“He will not find you. Our kind has escaped his eye since we wove the planes together.”  

Jason pondered that before responding.  She had jumped at least two worlds and done something to him to cut him off from those who could help him.  But it wasn't just to hide him, she was running.

“You’re afraid of him, Dream,” Jason asked.  “Why?”

“He will kill me.  For stealing that which belongs to the Dream.  For what I have done to you.”  She punctuated with a series of long chittering clicks.  “I must finish my task first.”

Jason would have to have a backup plan then.   He would kill those demons, but he knew he couldn't take them down in his current condition. If she wanted to go ahead with it then she was crazy.   Downright suicidal in fact, and she was going to take Jason down with her if he didn’t figure something out.  If he couldn't get away, then he had to convince her that there was another way.

“Let me get my friends,” Jason said.  “They can help fight.  We don’t have to do this alone.”

“We can do this with only us.  I have spent every day building death into my bones since my love was taken.  I only need you to open the door,” she said cryptically.  “I will do the rest.”

“What the hell does that mean?”  Jason was puzzled.  “What door?”

She didn’t reply, only moved forward slowly to stand by his side in the water.  Jason didn’t react to her approach, just held himself still.  His good arm was still stuck to the edge of the pool, and if she was going to attack, he need to be strategic in his defense lest he injure himself anymore.  He needed to keep his wits about him.

A long bony claw reached out of the water towards him.  He balked at her touch, but she only touched the curve between his neck and shoulder gently, above the puncture wounds she had inflicted on him earlier.

“Your lover does not like to share.  He has marked you as his.”  She was stroking a spot on his neck softly, and Jason realized it was where Dick had teased him with his mouth -- where he had left a mark.  A love bite.  A hickey.  He felt himself flush, both out of embarrassment and anger at her for breaching something so intimate.

“Yes.  I’m _his_.  You had no right to do what you did.”  Jason swallowed, trying to clear the tightness in his throat.  “What you’re _still_ doing.”

“I want to see again,” she said, and there was a shifting of the air around her.  Blurring, like oil on the surface of water, and suddenly her face had changed -- she was wearing Dick’s face again.  

“The answer is no!”  Jason was immediately furious.  “And if you're going to force me, stop wearing his face!”  He kicked his legs out at her under the water, but he felt her grab and restrain him.  She seized his shoulder with one leg and his bad arm with another and forced it outward, straightening it so that it was held perpendicular to his side.  

He let out a cry of pain, but then a memory of Dick was forced to the forefront of his mind again.  This memory was different -- it was from a few weeks ago, but it was just as intimate and private.  He felt it overwhelm him again, felt himself grow hard at the memory….

~~~~~~~~~~

The sight of Dick on his knees before him, mouth suckling at his hip, and then moving to take his cock into his mouth.  

Jason let out a groan of pleasure.  It had been right before Dick had left to join the Titans on a mission, and Jason had been preparing to go out to see an informant.  Dick had wanted to tag along, but Jason had refused.  The Red Hood didn’t need Nightwing hovering around when he was trying to re-establish himself as one of the Gotham Underground’s major players.  He didn’t want it to look like he was under the payroll of the Bats.  Jason had seen the disappointment on Dick’s face, and felt guilty for “closing the door” on him, metaphorically speaking.  But then Dick quickly recovered, the disappointment turning into a wry smile as he pushed Jason against a wall and knelt to undo the fly of his pants.

Dick’s mouth had been hot and wet, and as he worked his head back and forth on Jason’s cock, he had stroked his belly and massaged his balls.  He then pulled his hands behind Jason’s knees to tumble them both onto the floor.  Dick rolled Jason onto his back and undressed him fully, tugging Jason’s shirt over his head before scooting down to peel off his pants.  Dick stripped himself quickly afterwards, clothes flying in all directions with a teasing grin on his face.  He had gotten on top of Jason then, taken his swollen member into his mouth again and positioning his own cock over Jason’s face in a classic sixty-nine position.  He had let Dick fuck his face, opened his throat and swallowed him down at the same time he inserted a finger into Dick’s hole.

It had been gloriously arousing as Dick responded in kind, working his mouth and tongue against the slit of Jason’s cock and bobbing his head in rhythm with the piston of his hips.  Dick sucked and teased, swirled his tongue around the tip of his cock, and then sucked and swallowed him down again and again.  Jason bucked his hips upwards until he was losing control of himself, and spilled himself into Dick’s hot mouth.  Dick took all of it in, swallowing his seed, then pulled his mouth away, rearing back slightly and pumped his hips into Jason's face a few more times before spilling into his mouth likewise.  Salty and slick.  Jason swallowed him all the way down as Dick jerked and spasmed.  The taste of Dick in the back of his throat before he pulled out.  Dick rolled and shifted, replacing his softening cock in Jason's mouth with his tongue….

~~~~~~~~~~

Jason was breathing hard when he came back to himself, the memory slipping back to the recesses of his mind. He was still clutching the edge of the pool, faint tremors of orgasm coursing through him.  His eyes refocused and he saw the spider had moved away from him again.  Her face had reverted back to the spider eyes and fangs, but there was a look of sorrow in the curl of her mouth and a wetness around the multitude of eyes.

She had violated him again, but this time he could still feel her in his head.  He was conscious of her regret and anguish -- felt it as if it were his own -- how much she longed for the same intimacy that he had with Dick.  How much she missed her long lost lover.

Jason looked away from her, unable to sort through the intermingling of their emotions.  This was getting too confusing.  This was dangerous.  He couldn't tell where his mind ended and hers began. He could lose himself like this….

Jason shifted his arm slightly, stiff from holding his position, and found that she had cut the web that had bound him.  And furthermore, he was surprised to see she had woven a sort of sling around his injured shoulder and arm, a wide swath of woven silk used to support the weight across the opposite shoulder.  

“I have reinforced the bones of your arm... with memories,” she said softly.  “Not healed, but less pain.”

True to her words, the sharp throbbing had disappeared.  Instead, there was a tingling warmth that spread across his entire shoulder and arm.  It was almost comforting.  He tried to leverage himself out of the pool, and to his surprise again, she climbed up to help him out.

They sat in silence for a while at the edge of the water, Jason with his knees drawn up to his chest, and the spider in an odd tangle of folded bonesaw legs.  They stared at the gentle waves of the blue tinged water, and the spider handed him something.  It was some kind of fruit.  He took it and bit into it, too hungry and weak to question it.  It was crunchy and sweet, like an apple.  He finished it and threw away the core.  She handed him another.

“What was his name?” Jason finally asked, breaking the silence, but not looking away from the water.  “What's yours?”

She paused and looked at him for a moment, a slight pull, pressure behind his eyes as if she were searching for the right words.  She clicked and chittered, as if saying the names in her own tongue first, and then replied, “Your words do not allow me to say.  I was the weaver of earth, and he the sky. The Heart of the Sun. Together we were whole. One.”

“Are there others?  Ones like you?”  

“There are no others,” she replied with a throaty cluck.  

Jason was quiet as he let that sink in.  She was the only one left of her kind.  She was completely alone and isolated, and he could only imagine how that could have set her on a downward spiral.  His mind wandered to the thought of Bruce, and how his loneliness and grief had led him to become Batman.  But as much as Bruce isolated himself, even after his parents’ death he had never been truly alone. He had Alfred, and Doc Thompkins to a certain extent.  When Dick’s parents’ died he had Bruce and Alfred.  Jason hadn’t been alone either when he returned.  He had Talia, and then the All-Caste.  He had people around him trying to guide him, even if it was in the wrong direction.  There were people there who tried to catch him when he was consumed by anger and grief.

But the spider… if what she said was true, she had no one.  True isolation could be soul destroying, let alone when everyone you loved was ripped away from you.  And now all that was left was a starving need for intimacy and a gaping wound in her heart.

“How can you live like this?”  Jason asked.

“I can't. Not any longer,” she sobbed.  “It has to end.”

Jason didn't know what to say, so he let them lapse into silence again.  She had what he was starting to recognize as a crazed expression again, and he didn't want to set her off.  

“We must go,” she said of a sudden and abruptly stood up.

“Go where?”

“To end this,” she clucked.

“Right now?”  Jason was about the furthest from being prepared to fight.  His arm didn't hurt as much, but he still really only had one functioning arm when it came to fighting.  Plus he was still mostly nude, save for the sling she had made and the flimsy cloth wrapped around his hips. He didn't even have shoes.  

“I need my belt.  My guns at least,” he said desperately.  “Or at least some clothes!”

“No,” she said curtly, followed by another set of stuttering clicks.  “You have all that you need.”

She brought her two front bonesaw legs up,  holding them criss-crossed in front of her, before slashing them downward forcefully. Jason heard that tearing noise again, and it was like a flap of reality was peeled back, fluttering in a hot wind.  Behind it he could see a dusty gray landscape, dark and foreboding.

“No,” Jason cried. “We can't.  You’ll get us both killed!”

Jason backed up, but she saw his intention and shot a leg out to throttle him.  His vision went starry as she lifted him by the throat to step into the other realm.  The flap closed behind them, and she dropped him to the ground.

Jason scrambled up, getting his bearings and trying to make sense of where she had taken them. The landscape was dark, and the ground beneath him was sandy.  Hot winds swirled around him, and Jason had to hold a hand up to keep the sand from blowing into his eyes.  He could make out the rolling hill-shapes of sand dunes all around.  There was a stench of sulfur in the air, and it made his eyes water and his lungs slightly burn.

“Where the hell are we?” Jason had to raise his voice to a yell to be heard above the howl of the winds.

“Not Hell,” she replied, “a lower plane where they thrive.”

The winds picked up, and Jason huddled himself against the sting of sand against his naked skin.  He was literally being sandblasted at this rate.  

“You fucking brought us here,” he yelled again at the spider.  “Now what?”

She started down the dune they were standing on, and Jason trudged after her.  Thankfully, the winds died down as they descended, but as they reached the bottom Jason saw the source of the stench. There were glowing sulfuric pools lining the bottom of a valley amidst the dunes. Jason took a step forward, but the stone surrounding the pools was hot, burning the soles his bare feet.

He backed up onto the sand again, and the spider turned and took notice.  She cocked her head, let out an irritated array of chitters, before grabbing him and placing him on her thorax so he was riding on her back.  Jason could do little but accede, drawing his legs up as she continued to trudge on past the pools.

Eventually they reached a set of stone steps that she slowly ascended.  She was hesitant suddenly, Jason could feel tension as she moved beneath him.  

“What is it?”  Jason asked.

“I can feel him.”  Her clicks were low, almost like a growl.  “Horror.”

Jason could feel it too.  The itch under his skin from the All-Blades.  There was something evil at the top of those stairs.

She continued ascending until they reached a stone platform, longer than it was wide, and enclosed on three sides with high walls to keep the sand out from the dunes. There were several lit torches lining the walls, and at the end there was some kind of raised altar.  

Both Jason and the spider froze as they saw what lay upon it.

An emaciated form, shriveled and gray, lay still about a hundred feet away. At first Jason thought it was a man, his arms and torso nothing but skin and bones, but in place of his legs there appeared to be some kind of deflated sac.  And then Jason saw the thorax, four sockets along his side where there should have been legs -- spider legs.  And his face -- a mess of mutilated eyes. Eight eyes. The only thing intact was his fangs.

Shit.  It was the body of her lover.

But then it moved, twisting up to support himself on his two spindly human arms.  He let out a horrific screech, its face contorted in pure rage.

Oh fuck.  He was alive.  And he was _possessed_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Stockholm Syndrome is starting to kick in this chapter. Poor Jason.  
> This fic is really turning out more along the lines of the horror genre isn't it?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe it if I said I type most of this on my phone? It's actually quite efficient because it means I can work on this while I'm standing in line waiting for a burrito :)

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

“What's going on?” Zatanna demanded.  “Those two,” she pointed at the Corinthian, and then Essence, “I can't describe it, but that energy isn't just magic.  It's something else.  Something powerful.”

Bruce crossed his arms and looked at Essence. She merely scowled and averted her gaze to look at Tethys, who was still perched on her arm.  The bird in turn ruffled her feathers, and though Dick wasn't any expert at understanding the tells of bird behavior, if he had to guess he would have said she was slightly flustered.

Another fluff of her crest and then Tethys responded.  “The Lord of the Dream offers his assistance.  Jason is to be found and brought home unharmed.”

“I knew it!”  Constantine exclaimed.  “I met your boss once, long time ago.”

Zatanna still looked perplexed.  “What do you mean, John?  You don't mean…?”  She trailed off, but Constantine nodded at her unspoken question. Her eyes widened in response, and her gaze flitted across Essence and the Corinthian, then back to Bruce.  

“There are legends,” Zatanna said, shaking her head in disbelief.  “I've heard them since I was a girl, about the Lord of Dreams.  If that’s true, then why?  Why would a being of such power involve himself with this?  What is it about Jason that would bring in the Lord of the Dream himself?”

“I'd like to know the answer to that myself,” Bruce said crossly, darting a flat Bat-glare at the Corinthian.  Dick could tell the Corinthian's presence was not settling well with him at all, and the dramatics were adding to his irritation.

“That's not for me to say,” the Corinthian replied cryptically.  Bruce pressed his lips into a thin line and turned his attention to Essence and Tethys.  He said nothing, but his silence demanded an answer.

Essence merely shrugged.  “I honestly know as much as you do,” she finally said.  “I have not been told much.  Tethys is the messenger of the Lord Dream himself. If she cannot share, you will not hear it.”

It seemed at least for now, the mysteries would remain unrevealed.  And as much as Dick wanted to have all the answers, it was more important that they focused on what they needed to know to find Jason.  Unfortunately, that led them back to the latest addition to their cobbled-together party, the Corinthian.

“You were sent here to help find Jason,” Dick stepped forward to address the man.  He was merely standing with his arms crossed, but he gave off an air of menace about him.  “What do you know?”

The Corinthian pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and shook it out.  On it was drawn a set of three circles interlocked around a larger center circle.  They were decorated with occult symbols that Dick couldn't decipher.

“I’ve been given diagrams for the sigil that will help us find Jason,” the Corinthian said.  “They are from the Master’s own library.  From a book of the occult that was dreamed but never written.”  

Constantine looked intrigued at that.  Zatanna looked more apprehensive, and Bruce simply continued to scowl.

“I also know what this is,” the Corinthian added.  He reached behind him and pulled out something that had been tucked into his belt.  It was a bone shard, about the size and shape of a large kitchen knife -- presumably from the same shattered blade that had overwhelmed Dick and the others with its murderous visions.  The Corinthian was holding it with his _bare hand_ without even a flinch.

“How?”  Dick was gaping.  “You’re not affected?”

The Corinthian broke into a wide smile, his mouth-eyes slightly parted into gleeful slits, and a nauseating feeling began to form in Dick’s gut.  The Corinthian was affected alright, but the result was the exact opposite for him.  He _enjoyed_ it.

“Bloody hell,” Constantine breathed.  

“Would someone fill me in?”  Zatanna was looking increasingly troubled.

“The Corinthian is a Nightmare of the Lord Dreaming,” Tethys spoke softly.  Her tone was apologetic as she ruffled her feathers once more.   “Murder is his purpose.  The bone speaks the horrors for which he was made, and he has been reading it's memories to help us find a way to Jason.”

There was a pregnant silence.  Bruce’s jaw was set so tense that Dick wouldn't have been surprised if he cracked a tooth.  Zatanna saw it too, and her own expression betrayed her own revulsion at the Corinthian.

“Enoc fo ecnelis!”  Zatanna uttered the syllables of her backwards magic, and suddenly she had drawn Bruce to the far end of the station, where she started into a heated conversation with Bruce that the rest of them couldn't hear.  It was a bizarre scene, and Dick suffered a moment of cognitive dissonance as he wrapped his head around what he was seeing.  It was as if someone had suddenly hit the mute button.  Bruce and Zatanna were talking, their gesticulations and movements indicated what should have been a loud argument, but the rest of them heard nothing.  Dick considered intervening, but then thought better of it.  Bruce looked like he was holding his own, and trying to break into their private conversation could likely end in him getting blasted by a stray bolt of magic.

Constantine just looked on.  “Glad it's not me getting it this time.”  He had a cigarette in his mouth again, and turned back to the Corinthian. “Now let's see this sigil the good Lord Dream found for us.”

He held out a hand and took the paper from the Corinthian, inspecting it with a frown.  

“Good.  Let's not waste any more time on me,” the Corinthian finally chimed in.  “This is about finding Jason.”

Dick found himself nodding in agreement, until the Corinthian turned to him, casually reaching a hand out to skirt along the hem of his suit top.

Dick flinched back, backpedaling several feet, heart pounding in his chest.

“Hands off,” he snapped.

The Corinthian just grinned, taking a step forward toward Dick.  “What's the matter?” he asked mockingly.  “I’m just trying to help.  I can tell you’re injured.  Let me take a look.”

He took another step forward and leaned in.  “If you take your shirt off I can draw a ward of protection on you,” the Corinthian licked his lips and grinned sadistically.

Dick backed away further, taking a defensive stance, and trying to hide how much the unwanted attention had rattled him.  “No!”

The Corinthian reached a hand out again, but there was a blur of gray mist and suddenly Essence was blocking his way.  “Stop it.  Now.  Both of you!”

Dick was incredulous.  “ _Both_ of us?   _He’s_ the one who --.”

“Stop being so pathetic,” she cut him off.  “It's no wonder Jason was taken. How could you possibly protect him if you can't even protect yourself!”

Dick was at a loss for words.  Essence had been giving him angry vibes the entire time, but this was the first time she had outright blamed him for not protecting Jason. It was true, wasn’t it?  Dick’s vulnerability was a liability.  Jason had been too focused on protecting him, which in turn had left Jason open to the spider. Had Dick failed him so utterly?  Essence’s reprobation left him feeling heart-stricken with guilt.

Essence turned back to the Corinthian.  “You _know_ Jason would disapprove,” she said fiercely.

That seemed to do the trick, and the Corinthian halted his advance toward Dick. He let his hand drop and began to turn away, when suddenly a line shot out and wrapped around his neck. He was yanked backwards, falling with a heavy thud on the ground.  

“You monster!”  It was Bruce, and Dick could see he was absolutely livid.  He tugged hard on the line still wrapped around the Corinthian's neck.  “We don't need your kind of help!”

The Corinthian brought his hand up, he was holding the bone blade, and snapped the line from his neck.  He was up on his feet again, moving surprisingly fast for a man of his size.

“Oh really?”  He sneered back at Bruce.  “I dare you to find a faster way to tear through the veil than with this.”  He twirled the bone blade in his hand.  “None of you can even touch it for longer than a second,” he laughed.  “How about we see who finds Jason first?  I’ll bet you it will be me, and then I can show him which of us can truly take care of him. Shall we?”

“Eb enog ot ecnehw ouy emac!”  Zatanna pointed a wand at the Corinthian, and a bolt of magic flared out at him.  The Corinthian raised his arm, using the bone shard again, and slashed at the bolt as it reached him.  There was a strange tearing noise, and the magical bolt was suddenly gone. Dissipated.

The Corinthian stood there, unharmed.

“Want to try that again, girl?”  The Corinthian said menacingly.  “I normally like pretty little boys that scream, but I can pluck out _your_ eyes and devour them all the same.”

Dick felt sick.  The man was vile.  He knew Jason had some kind if relationship with him, but this was too much.  They couldn't possibly work with such a monster.  He was a murderer… and a _rapist_.

Dick reached into the shoulder bag Tim had given him and pulled out an Nth metal batarang.  On the other side of the platform, he saw Bruce unsheath something from behind his back.  It was a sword.  The one the Corinthian had originally given Jason.  Forged by one of the other Endless -- the sword that could shoot fireballs.  Bruce was geared up for a fight to take the monster down.

Essence put a hand up. “Stop!  Do not attack him.  You are feeding into his lust for violence.”

“She’s right.” Constantine took a long drag from his cigarette and stepped between them.  He put his hands up, Bruce and Zatanna on one side, and the Corinthian on the other.  “And _he’s_ right too,” Constantine pointed at Corinthian.  “We can’t do this without him.  That blade, and the sigil he gave us is probably the fastest way you can find your man, Jason.”

“He’s lying,” Bruce gritted out.

“Is he?”  Constantine arched a brow.  “This here,” he waved the paper with the sigil drawn on it.  “It looks like it’s like a reverse recall. Like a homing beacon but the other way around.  We can't use it to bring Jason here, but we can go there. It's bloody brilliant.  It uses three objects to triangulate, plus something in the center from Jason.  Something of his from his self, blood maybe, that we can hone in on.  I'm thinking our favorite nightmare here already knows what we can use.”

“Yes, I do.”  The Corinthian was smiling again, three full sets of teeth across the maws of his face.  He raised his hand and pointed at Dick.  

“Me?”  Dick asked in confusion. “You can use me to find Jay?”

“Not exactly. What's inside you,” the Corinthian winked.

“What does that mean?”  Dick did not like where this was going.

“He fucked you last night didn't he?”  The Corinthian licked his lips lasciviously.  “There's still traces of his seed in you.  I can tell.”  

Dick felt his jaw drop, face flushing… felt his skin crawl.  He suddenly felt exposed.  His suit felt too tight… too _revealing_.  It was true.  He and Jason had made love earlier the previous night, and there was probably still traces of _semen_ inside him. Something that was truly made _from Jason_ was inside Dick.

Dick swallowed and looked away, face still heated. He found he had unconsciously brought his arms up to hug his chest.  His heart was still racing, and he felt light headed.

“Dick?”  Bruce was by his side, tense and hovering, but he was using the width of his body and cape to try and shield the Corinthian from his view.

“I'm fine,” Dick snapped, bristling slightly at the paternalistic treatment.  

“No, you're not,” Bruce stated.  “He’s baiting you on purpose.  You’re not ready for this.”

“I said I'm fine!”  Dick clenched his fists at his side.  “He's baiting you too, and you nearly started an all out fight!”

“You leave yourself wide open.”  It was Essence this time, hovering a short distance away.  “He knows your vulnerabilities, but you let him exploit them.”

She still had the bird on her shoulder, and she spared a second to give Dick a scathing look, before returning her glare toward the Corinthian.  He was now on the other side of the platform speaking with Constantine.  Zatanna was with them, examining the diagram and watching the Corinthian warily.

“I didn't ask for your opinion,” Dick bit out at Essence, riling up for an argument.

“That's enough,” Bruce was glaring at them both.  “This isn't the time for this.”

Essence ignored him, and turned to Dick angrily, “The way Jason talks of you, I would have thought you were smarter than to let one as revolting as the Corinthian under your skin.”

Dick was about to let loose a caustic retort, but then her words sank in.  Jason had talked to her about him?  Dick hadn’t even known that they were in contact.

“When have you spoken to Jason?”  Dick asked, somewhat accusatory, but curiosity was momentarily overriding his irritation.

“I speak to him frequently,” she replied.  “I have been monitoring his recovery.”

She had?  When was this?  The expression on his face must have given him away, because she went on.  “I take it he hasn't told you.”

“Told me what?”

“That we talk.”

No.  Jason hadn’t mentioned it, but then again, Jason tended not to mention a lot of things.  And it wasn't as if Dick reported to Jason every time he talked to one of his friends on the Titans.  In fact, they tended to avoid the subject altogether, so it didn't necessarily mean that he was hiding it. They just didn’t talk about their friends.  There was no reason to be jealous….

He _wasn't_ jealous.  

“Did you know about this?”  Dick turned to Bruce, unable to hide his… whatever it was he was feeling.

“I knew she had been on the premises several times at the manor,” Bruce said neutrally.  “Before you two moved out.  I had to recalibrate the sensors to detect her.”

Essence glanced back at him again. She looked smug.  “You need not worry.  He is faithful to you, but this isn’t about you and your insecurities.  We need to find Jason, and it looks like you are the key. Now can you pull yourself together for the casting?”

She was right.  He couldn't let his fear and insecurities override the need to find Jason.  The Corinthian's presence was unnerving, and if Dick was honest with himself, he felt extremely threatened, both by the power he held over Jason and by the very fact that he clearly wanted to victimize Dick.  He had already tried, and Dick would have to be on constant guard around him.  

But he didn't have to do this alone.

He looked at Bruce, who had been standing with him, side by side, as Dick struggled to regain control. Bruce reached out a hand, clasping Dick’s shoulder firmly in a brief moment of support.  It wasn't the same as Jason’s gentle grip, but he knew Bruce had his back no matter what.

“Yes,” Dick finally replied.  “I can do this.”

Bruce turned to Essence, barking more harshly than he had previously, “Can we trust him?”  He gestured toward the Corinthian.

“To an extent.” Essence was clearly vexed, but she seemed resigned to their current situation. “Tethys has confirmed what he says is true.  The Lord Dream sent him here to help, given his… unique abilities.  He is forbidden from outright murder in the waking, unless it is in defense of the Dreaming.  But that does not mean that he will not play with us, or hurt us, given the chance.”  Essence sighed, and looked at Tethys perched on her shoulder.

The bird shook out her crest before speaking again.  “Unfortunately, working with him is the fastest way to find Jason.”

“Fine,” Dick took a breath and moved toward where Constantine had already begun to draw out the sigil.  “Let's do this. Let's find Jay.”

“Wait,” Bruce put out a hand again. “Dick, are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”  He nodded back at Bruce.  “And thanks,” he said more quietly.

They spent the next couple hours building the sigil. Dick sat squarely in the center circle as Constantine drew the symbols around him.  Much to Dick’s relief, Zatanna was able to cast a ward to protect them from possession, without the need for the Corinthian putting his hands on Dick.  

“John and I looked at this sigil closely,” Zatanna said as Constantine finished the last of the symbols, “and if you do this, we may not be able to go with you.”  She pointed to where Bruce, Essence, and the Corinthian were positioned around Dick in the outer circles.  “Instead of objects, the Corinthian has instructed us to use the three of you -- using what you have in common to triangulate.”

“Our love for Jason,” the Corinthian clarified.

Dick bristled at the comment. Jason was certainly the only thing that they had in common, but he refused to believe that the monster had anything like love for Jason in his murderous heart.  

The Corinthian took notice of Dick’s reaction and grinned, before continuing.  “Isn't that right Essence?”  

“I can only speak for myself,” she replied, crossing her arms with a steely glare.  “I care deeply for Jason.”

“As I was saying,” Zatanna spoke up again, “The sigil is going to use you to triangulate based on your mutual connection to Jason, but John and I don't have any sort of link with him.  Once you tear the veil with the bone, it's likely it will only pull the four of you through.”  

“You’re going to be on your own, but we can keep the sigil activated,” Constantine added.  “Once you find Jason you should be able to tear your way home again.  Now let's begin.”

Dick watched as Constantine and Zatanna stood outside of the ring of circles and raised their arms. The sigil began to glow beneath him, and he felt a faint tingling as the magic coursed through him.  

Dick braced himself. The feel of magic was making him nervous. Drakar had used it to hold him down, so instead he tried to focus his thoughts on Jason -- he needed them, and they were doing this so they could get to get him back.  

“Essence,” the Corinthian’s voice jarred him back to the present. “How old were you when you fucked him?  Jason was barely legal right?”  The monster chuckled to himself.  “Or maybe he wasn't even that.”

“Shut up!”  Essence ground out. “That is none of your concern.”

“Come on,” the Corinthian egged on, “you're like a thousand years old aren't you?  And people give _me_ a hard time about fucking his bony teenaged ass.  You're just as bad.”

“We loved each other.  He gave himself freely, as did I,” Essence said defensively.  “And Jason has never been a child since I have known him. He has always been older than his years.”

Whoa. Dick had _not_ known that.  Jason had definitely seen more than his fair share of the world by the time Dick had met him, but he had no idea Essence was a _thousand_ years old.  Putting it in that light, it _did_ sound highly inappropriate.  Essence hadn’t denied it, but she looked about ready to blast the Corinthian to kingdom come.

There was a squawk behind him. It was Tethys, who had been standing outside the circle.  “He is goading you,” she said, “but your feelings for Jason will fuel the spell.”  

“She's right,” Constantine said, still standing with Zatanna, powering the sigil.  “We’re channeling magic, but it isn’t enough to fully activate it. You're going to need to feed the connection with your emotions.”

The Corinthian broke into a wide grin in response and turned his gaze to Dick.  “You’re not innocent either.  Aren't you supposed to be the older brother?  He looked up to you. Still does, but you use him as an emotional crutch.”  The Corinthian pointed an accusatory finger at him.  “You let him fuck you up the ass, but you're really the one calling the shots.  And what does he get out of it?  You can't even protect him.  Jason's the one left holding the bag.”

“No!  It's not like that,”  Dick cried, but it was hitting too close to home.  They loved each other, but Dick knew he leaned on Jason a little too much for emotional support.  And it was true… Dick couldn't protect Jason the way the Corinthian or Essence could with their metahuman powers.  He couldn’t even protect him from whatever entanglement he still had with the Corinthian.  Not when Dick himself had spent the better part of the last year an emotional train wreck.  But that wasn’t what Jason needed from him, was it?   

Dick’s non-answer seemed to be answer enough for the Corinthian, and enough to further power the sigil apparently.  The thing was letting out some kind of hum, and had started increasing in intensity -- for better or worse, the Corinthian's taunts were certainly feeding into it.  

“Don't let him get to you.”  Bruce’s voice cut through the buzzing of the magic.  “Don’t let that monster make you question yourself.”  

Dick looked over his shoulder to see him standing in his own connected circle.  Even after all these years, and with all the ups and downs of their father-son relationship, the image of him standing strong and resolute as Batman… it made him feel just a little bit safer. If he still believed in Dick, then Dick wanted to believe in himself as well.  

“What about you, _Daddy_?”  The Corinthian jeered.  It seemed he just wouldn't shut up.  “You're the only one who hasn't fucked him, but that's probably why Jason couldn't figure out that you loved him.  That’s what love is for Jason.  Ever since his mommy up and died, it's the only way he could get anyone to pay attention to him.  Fucking. You show him love by fucking him. That’s what you never understood!”

“Shut your mouth!”  Bruce roared.

“Which one?”  The Corinthian laughed in return.

The buzzing of magic suddenly increased. It was so loud Dick could barely hear the shouting anymore.  The tingling of magic that had ghosted over his skin felt intense now, and it seemed to center in his gut.  He felt it coalesce and it was as if something had punched him, winding the breath out of him.  

“It's locked on!”  Constantine was yelling. “Do it now!”

In front of him, he saw the Corinthian pull the bone shard from his belt, gripping it firmly in hand before slashing at the air before him.

There was loud tearing sound and a bright light, and suddenly they were falling through the floor into a strange mist-filled grayness.  Another tearing sound and Dick fell through again to land on a smooth dark floor.  He rolled himself to his hands and knees, and then there was a hand under his arm.  He looked up to see Bruce was pulling him onto his feet.

Dick looked around.  The Corinthian and Essence were there as well, inspecting their surroundings in the dim light.  As his eyes adjusted he could tell they were in a large room with rounded walls. It looked like it had been carved or hollowed out of something.

“I don't understand,” Dick asked aloud. “Where’s Jason?”

“He was here,” Bruce replied. He was shining a light on the floor, and knelt to pick something up.  A torn scrap of fabric, dark with dark red markings.  It was a piece of Jason’s suit.  

Dick pulled his own light out to shine on the floor.  There were more pieces spread around the room, his armour and clothes cut to pieces with a jagged edge.  They found his boots.  His belt… but no body.  Dick didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more concerned.

“She stripped him of his clothes and weapons,” Essence concluded.  “She wanted him vulnerable.”

“There’s web as well.  Relatively fresh,” Bruce pointed out.  “He was tied down at these four anchor points.”

“She hurt him.”  The Corinthian was kneeling where Bruce had indicated, and there was something in his tone that had a chill running down Dick’s spine.  Outwardly he was highly controlled, but Dick noted the coldness of his tone and the rigid clench of his jaw.  There was none of the sadistic playfulness that the Corinthian had taunted them with earlier.  Instead, there was only  pure anger there.  Anger for what had been done to Jason.  

Dick couldn't understand it.  Was it true that the Corinthian really did care for Jason?  This thing that was less a man than monster -- who was literally made to murder and who admitted to raping Jason as a child -- could such a thing actually feel the love that it claimed?  Jason certainly seemed to hold a great amount of affection for him, so much that he consistently angered the rest of the family, including Dick, with his defensiveness over the Corinthian.  Dick had tried to let the issue drop, but it had always bothered him.

_Are you jealous?_  

Dick shook his head at himself. The thought was absurd, and there wasn't time for it.  They needed to look for clues to find Jason.

Dick made toward the four anchor points to get a closer look.  Something had definitely happened here.  Something bad.  And Dick hoped it wasn’t what it looked like.  As he knelt to examine the closest of the anchor points, he suddenly felt that odd tingling of magic again.  It was like a pull in his gut, and when he moved to stand in the center of the the points, he felt the pull increase.  The spell was still running, Dick realized, and he needed to keep following it to find Jason.

He turned a slow circle, trying to figure out where it would lead them next, until he felt his belly lurch suddenly.  He let out a gasp and doubled over, clutching at his middle.  He looked up to see there was a passage directly in front of him at the edge of the room.

Bruce was instantly next to him. “What is it?”  He asked with concern.

“We need to keep moving,” Dick said as Bruce helped him back up.  “The spell is still following Jay.  I can feel it.”

He moved down the passageway, the others following closely. There were occasional slits where they got a glimpse of the view outside, but Dick kept moving. The pull of the magic was like an urgent hunger, driving forward until he reached an opening to a dark vertical shaft.

“Take us down there,” Dick said to Essence.  Bruce held up a light as Essence levitated the four of them down the shaft.  There was a line of web running down as well, and they followed it until they reached the bottom.  It was pitch black save for the light from Bruce’s flashlight, and the ground was rocky.   They were at the bottom of some kind of pit.  There was nothing here, but at the same time Dick knew there was.  He felt the pull of magic strongly, so much that it was almost painful.  There was something _on the other side_.

“Here,” he choked out, turning to the Corinthian.  “Use the blade again here.”

The Corinthian complied, stepping up beside Dick and slashing at the air with that strange tearing sound again.  There was a slit of light and the Corinthian grabbed the back of his suit and dragged him through.  The others followed and they were suddenly in that strange gray misty space again.  

“Where is this place?”  Dick asked.

“We’re in the seams between worlds,” the Corinthian said matter-of-factly.  “Sometimes you can’t get from point A to point Z directly.  Instead of going through all the points, you go to the seams.”

The Corinthian slashed again, and they were suddenly standing on a rocky landscape overlooking a glowing pool.  Dick felt the magic pull at him again, almost like a wrenching in his gut, and fell to his knees.

“Nngh,” he grunted.  “Take me to the water!”

Essence floated them down to stand at the edge of the water, and Bruce was immediately examining something at the lip of the pool.

“There’s web here too.  Jason was likely bound here and forced into the water.”  Bruce backed up from the edge and examined the ground.  “It's still wet.  They were here very recently.”

Dick took it all in, and noted that it matched the roiling pain of magic in his gut.  Jason had definitely been here, and it felt like he was still close… but also far away.  They needed to cut the veil again to another plane.

“Here,” Dick said with considerable strain.  “Cut again here.”

The Corinthian slashed again, and this time, instead of the gray space, there was a dark landscape with a hot billowing wind.  The Corinthian stepped through, and Dick and the others followed.

They were standing in a field of dunes, gusts of hot wind and sand blowing into his hair and eyes.  The environment was brutal, and they had to get out of here before the wind literally stripped their skin.

Dick trudged forward, blindly following the magical pull in his gut.  The feeling was intense now, and it was all he could do to push on, lest the pain of it overwhelm him.  He focused his thoughts on Jason.  The pain of the spell, it was worth it, if it would bring him to Jason.   

They went downwards and away from the hot gusts, until they were running alongside boiling sulfuric pools.  Dick stumbled and fell, landing on his hands and knees.  There was a sizzling burn as the hot rocks beneath him began to sear his suit.  He was suddenly yanked upwards into the air.  Essence was levitating him.

“Dick, wait!” Bruce called from behind him.  “We need to be careful.  This environment is hostile.  Those sulfuric pools could dissolve you in seconds if you fall into them.”

“Can’t… stop,” Dick managed to wheeze out.  He was clutching his stomach now, the urgency and force of it was overtaking his senses.  “The magic… it's pulling me.  Jason.  We need to get to Jason!”

“I’ll take us,” Essence spoke.  There was concern and fear laced throughout her features as well.  “Just tell me where.”

Dick pointed, and they were off.  Essence whisked the four of them forward in a cloud of gray mist, until the reached a set of stone steps leading upward.

“There!” Dick cried.  Jason was so close.  The magic was so powerful now, Dick was literally shaking.  

There was suddenly a loud screech from above -- a long grating cry, like tearing metal and rumbling thunder combined -- and Dick was reaching forward even as Essence pulled the four of them up the stairs.

They reached the top of and Dick finally saw him.  Jason.  It was Jason!  His nearly naked form was huddled _on top_ of the spider.  He was riding on her back, and there was some kind of makeshift sling around his arm.  They were several yards away, facing down the length of the stone platform they were standing on.  They were staring at something gray and shriveled on the ground.

“Jason!” Dick shouted, and Jason turned in surprise.   There was shock written all over his face, but Dick let out a sigh of relief.  

They had found him.  They had _finally_ found him.  And he was alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- Constantine helped the original Dream, Morpheus, find his missing bag of sand. I don't think it's been referenced since the reboot, but I did here.  
> \-- I really liked writing this chapter. It was fun to get everyone all riled up.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go. More dramatics served!

~~~~~ Jason ~~~~~

Jason gaped at the abomination -- the demon that had taken host in what was left of the spider’s lover -- as it writhed and squirmed toward them.  Whatever was controlling it was powerful.  And evil. He was still huddled on the spider's back, and he could feel that she was physically shaking with barely controlled emotion.  He could feel the the rage emanating from her….  Heartbreaking agony. Despair. Grief.  He could literally _feel her._

 _Shit,_ Jason mentally cursed in sudden realization.  She was still connected to him.  She was still entangled in his mind.

“Jason!”  A shout from behind him and he turned to see a figure appear over the edge of the stone platform, clad in black and blue… it was Dick!

He was quickly followed by Essence.  Then Batman and the Corinthian. They had somehow  found him!

Jason slid down the spider’s back and between her bony legs to run to meet them, momentarily throwing off the rage and grief that had overtaken him in his relief at seeing familiar faces.  But then, a bony claw was suddenly gripping his shoulder, and he flinched at the stabbing jolt of pain.  The spider had grabbed his injured side where the she had previously bitten him.

“No,” the spider hissed and clicked.  “ _They_ are coming.  You must open the door.”

“What fucking door are you talking about?  Let go!”  Jason tried to pull away, but she simply dug her claws in, breaking his skin and sending another nauseating stab of pain through him.  

Dick and the others were running toward him now, but suddenly a blur of white came crashing down in front of them.  He saw Dick roll out of the way as chips of rock flew in all directions.  It was a bone blade, and holding it was a large hulking form with dark leathery skin and pointed ears. It was one of those things Jason had seen from the tunnels.

“Run!” Jason shouted, but another dark form appeared, and then another until he counted seven demons, each holding a bone blade of it's own.  He watched as Bruce and Dick barely dodged another swing from the first demon’s blade.  Essence dematerialized into a cloud of mist to evade yet another demon, and the Corinthian was struck hard from behind by a vicious kick from another of the dark figures.

They were dodging, Jason noted, but they were moving all wrong.  They weren't evading the blows with the precision Jason would have expected.  They were _guessing_ , and Jason realized that other than the white bone of the blades, none of them -- Dick, Bruce, Essence, and even the Corinthian -- could see the dark, hulking forms that were attacking them.  

They couldn't see the demons, and if they couldn't see, they couldn't fight effectively.  

His friends. His family.  They would be slaughtered.

Jason twisted in the spider’s grasp, trying to get free. He called an All-Blade up with his good arm to slash at her leg, when all of a sudden he felt something impact him from behind.  A searing pain erupted through his chest.  He felt his knees buckle under him, but instead of falling to the ground, he was held upright.  Jason looked down to see that the spider had impaled him through the back, and he was now hanging from the length of a bonesaw leg that protruded out the front of his chest.  

His All-Blade dissipated, and he brought his hand up to grip the boney leg sticking through his front.  She had struck him again right through his heart.  He choked as he tried to suck in air, convulsing in pain, but his lungs weren't working.  But then the searing pain receded, only to be replaced by a cold numbness spreading through his body.   

Blood rushed in his ears.  He could hear his heart pounding, and then slowing… beat by beat… the space between each pulse tensely silent, growing longer and longer.  

He watched with an odd detachment as the world around him slowed down at the same time.  The movements of the hulking demons slowed, chunks of debris seemed to float in the air.  Dick had leapt to dodge another blow, and he seemed to hover over the ground by several feet.  Everything moved slower and slower with each heartbeat until time was at standstill.  Everything around him was frozen in motion -- completely unmoving and soundless.

He saw the faces of his loved ones looking toward him, frozen expressions of utter shock.  Dick looked like he was screaming, distracted by what was happening to Jason, and blind to another dark form creeping up behind him.  The Corinthian’s mouths twisted in distress as he tried to break through the bulk of the invisible demon holding him back.  Essence’s large dark eyes were wide with disbelief as she floated above, staring at Jason and trying to make sense of what she couldn't see.  And Bruce, oh god, Bruce.  He had somehow dodged clear of the attacks, but he was looking toward Jason as well.  He had never seen it before, but now it was clear as day -- written in the line of tension in Bruce’s face and body -- even with his cowl on, Jason could see his _fear_.  Bruce was fearful over what was happening to Jason.

He had to do something. He refused to let his family and friends get torn apart.  The spider had stabbed him with her leg, but it was just as she had done the last time. She wasn't trying to kill him -- she had phased her leg through him to link with his psyche.

There was a pressure in his head.  A foreign presence in his mind.  He could feel the spider, looking through his eyes, assessing the forms of the dark demons that were attacking.  It was the first time she could see the demons that had taken and maimed her lover, and Jason felt an unbelievable hatred boil over and spill into his awareness.  

And now those things threatened Jason’s own loved ones.  He felt his own anger building into a rage that echoed the spider’s own.  There was no way he would let what happened to her lover happen again. Their emotions joined together, intermingling so that Jason felt her, almost as if she were a part of himself.

And then he heard her voice.

_You can save them, if you open the door._

_What door?  I don’t understand what that means!_ Jason thought back at her.

 _Let me in further.  Give me control,_ she said.

 _Why?  What will you do?_  Jason could feel her pushing in deeper.  She was already invading him.  He could feel her desperation seeping into his consciousness. He felt urgency, anger, and an overwhelming lust for vengeance….  She wanted more than anything to kill those demons that had destroyed her lover, and she was rooting around inside Jason for something.  He couldn't quite figure out what, but Jason was fighting her, pushing back at the trespass in his mind.

 _You must open the door,_ she said again, letting up the pressure slightly. She seemed to have realized that the more she pushed, the more Jason fought.  She wanted Jason to cede control.

 _I will show you.  You see the dark fiends, and yet you cannot see yourself._   _Let me open the door.  Let me free him, and I will show you._

He felt a wash of her grief overcome him again through their mind link.  Images and sensations flooded his mind of unbearable pain and desolation.  It was of her lover's torture.  She had known all this time that he was alive -- she had felt the echoes of his crumbling mind as he was abused and mutilated beyond recognition in both body and soul.  She knew because they had still been connected through their _bones_ , and she could do nothing to stop it. Until now.

Now….  Now she had Jason, and he could feel her desperate rage increasing as she showed him how she had felt her lover suffer as the demon slowly destroyed him from the inside out.  Felt how he had given up hope, and eventually lost his mind to the terrible pain and horror inflicted upon him. And now Jason felt it too.  Whether he liked it or not, Jason was connected to the spider and her lover as well.

_We will save the others. We will free him. We will end this._

_Yes._

He couldn't tell who was who anymore.  She was _in him_ , and it felt strangely harmonious. They were completely in sync.  Her anger and lust for vengeance, emotions he already knew too well, were now his too.

The leg was withdrawn from Jason’s chest with a forceful yank, and she… no, _they_ surveyed the world around them through Jason’s eyes.  

Time sped up again, the sound of his heart began pounding again in his ears, and Jason was finally able to suck in a breath.  He could feel the spider in his head -- their minds were still interconnected.   They could see the demons straddling the layers of their current plane of reality.  Layers all on top of one another, like sheaves of paper.  The demons were like a dark liquid stain that seeped through, infiltrating a cross-section that pervaded the planes. Except they didn't reach the topmost layer… they hid themselves behind the veil of the material world.

It was clear now, Jason saw it through the spider's eyes -- what was meant by _the door --_ the layers of reality compressed together tightly like a closed book.  But together they could change it so that it could be _opened_ … a pivot in reality and they could let the layers fan out.  Like opening up a pop-up book -- where suddenly the objects between the pages would burst forth and come to life.  

Time was flowing normally again, and Jason was aware of some kind of pulsing energy running through him.  There was chaos all around as the dark demons continued attacking -- one was about to claw at Dick, a likely fatal blow.

He would die again before he let that happen.   _Rage. Grief. Fear. Vengeance._ It all flowed through him along with the strange pulse of power.  The spider had tapped into something inside him. Something connected to what he had done before to purify -- an innate ability to take evil and _expunge_ it, but now it was blown wide open.  

 _Circle,_ was what she said to him, which still didn't make any sense to Jason… but it didn't matter.  He focused on the moment at hand -- destroying those bastards who were trying to kill his loved ones… who were trying to kill Dick.

With a roar, Jason reached out his good hand.  He could feel the demon, lurking behind the veil like a _coward_.  He closed his fist, and something in him locked on.  Locked onto every one of those fucking bastards. All seven of them.

 _Now._ He thought at the spider. _We tear open the veil now!_

The spider was pressed up against his back, and she reached in front of him with her bony legs and slashed through the air.  

And then Jason _pulled_.  Layers of reality peeled back until he had the bastards, and forced them forward until they were in the material world.  Forced them to form into flesh and bone.  Forced them to face them on equal ground. Now they could _bleed_.  Now they could be _killed_.  

The spider launched forward into the fray, aiming her bonesaw legs like spears. She grabbed the one that had been about to claw Dick, knocked the bone blade out of it's hand, and tumbled it down to the ground in a blur of slashing legs. She reared up, and she had a flap of the demons dark leathery skin in her claws. She flayed it, spraying bits of blood and gore in all directions as she ripped and tore at skin and flesh, all the while the demon screamed and screeched beneath her.  The white bone of her body was now covered in dark red blood.  It dripped from her legs, smeared across her face and torso.  All the hatred and fury she had borne over the years was now brought to the surface.  She was finally able to enact her vengeance.  She wanted the things to _suffer_.  She left the torn and bloody body of the demon and moved to take down another.

Jason echoed her rage, screaming himself hoarse in fury.   _Anger. Vengeance.  Prey._  Her emotions rebounded through him.  He wanted to kill.  He wanted blood.  He scanned the chaotic scene for another target, and attacked one of the demons closest to him.  

He locked onto it -- using that same force he had used to bring it into flesh, and pulled it down to the ground and pinned it.  He called an All-Blade and stabbed it through it's skull, wrenching it back out with another spray of gore.  A loud screaming erupted around them, just as he had heard that first time in the tunnels, but this time Jason could see the planes below opening up.  A deep fissure appeared, and the most intense evil Jason had ever felt swallowed the demon up.  It had been drawn back into the _Hell_ where it came from.

 _Blood.  Savagery.  Rage._ The emotions continued to course through him.  In the back of his mind, Jason knew he had lost control.  The spider had taken over, but he didn't know how to stop.  Everything he was feeling.... it was her, but it was also himself… everything blended together.

_Kill them…._

There were still more of the demonic bastards that needed to be killed.  He watched as the Corinthian wrestled one to the ground, strangling it with his hands, but the demon managed to throw him off.

_Make them suffer…. Make them hurt._

More blood.  More violence.  He needed both his hands, so Jason cut the sling around his bad arm, called forth both his All-Blades, and lept into the fray.  The pain was excruciating, but he let the bloodlust carry him through the pain.  He kicked a flailing claw out of the way with a bare foot, earning him a gash across his arch.  It hurt, but he ignored it.  He stabbed the length of an All-Blade through its throat, and used the other to gut it.  He felt a feeling of satisfaction as the thing gurgled on it's own blood.  

 _Sadistic glee.  Laughter.  Pleasure._ He felt a stir in his groin as he watched the demon choke on it's own bile.  

Wait… what?

Jason was suddenly appalled at himself.  He had never enjoyed outright killing. It had always been a necessary evil in his mind.  Occasionally it was satisfying, mostly when he hadn’t been sane, but he had never _delighted_ in the act.   He had never been _turned on_ by it… until now….  That wasn't _him_ was it?  It was the spider… wasn't it?

The fissure into Hell opened up again, screams reverberating so loud Jason felt the ground trembling under his feet, and the demon was dragged down.  

 _Make them suffer…._  That voice. She was controlling him…. He felt his mind slipping again.  He couldn’t resist.  Jason turned to seek out another demon, even as the splintered stone floor cut into his feet.  Even as his injured arm and shoulder throbbed in protest.   _More prey…._

“Jason!  Stop!”  The Corinthian ran up to him, looking distraught, and grabbed his shoulders.  There was a flare of pain from the jostling of his wounds, but then the Corinthian cupped Jason’s face, wiping smeared gore out of his eyes.   “What are you doing?  You can’t fight like this.  You're hurting yourself.”

 _He is a distraction._ Jason jerked back as the thought stabbed into his mind.  He shook his head, trying to clear it, putting a hand up to his temple and closing his eyes.

_He is trying to stop you.  You must finish the task.  Use your power.  Free my love.  Free him._

Yes.  He needed to free the other spider….  Jason felt her yearning.  Her lover had to be released from the living hell he was trapped in.  He felt her  heartbreaking sorrow and pity overtake him.  The dark forces were still controlling the gray spider, and controlling the other demons. It had to be stopped or he would call forth even more.  The darkness in him needed to be purged.  Jason turned to move in the other direction, toward the other end of the platform where the gray spider still writhed.

“No, Jason!”  The Corinthian was gripping his arm tightly even as Jason twisted away.  “Snap out of it! She's using you. She's going to get you killed!”

The Corinthian was suddenly tackled.  The spider slammed him into the ground and began binding him in silk.

_Go.  I will not kill him, but he is distracting you from your task. Go free my love._

Jason turned to run down the platform, a desperate urgency filling him.  

 _Free him.  Deliver him from evil…._  

 _Yes_ , Jason’s thoughts echoed hers.  It was only right, wasn’t it?  No soul should have to continue to suffer as the gray spider had.  He would free him… he wanted to free the gray spider.

There was more shouting.  Jason saw Essence regroup herself after dodging a swipe of a bone blade.  She blasted the demon with a bolt of her power, knocking the blade from it's hand and sending it over the edge of the platform into the sulfur pools.

“Jason!”  Essence charged toward him, only to be caught in a net of web.  She fell to the ground and the spider was upon her, stabbing the tip of a broken bone blade into Essence’s leg.  She yelled in pain, but then clutched her head, an expression of terror on her face.  Essence began screaming -- the murderous memories from the blade were overwhelming her.

“No!”  Jason shouted, the clouding in his mind began to clear upon seeing Essence harmed.  He stopped and turned back toward the spider.  “Stop it!  Stop hurting my friends!”

 _She will recover.  Now complete your task.  Free him._  

Jason wavered, confused at the jumbled push and pull of emotions inside him.  He was furious that she had hurt Essence, but he felt that same fury amplified by the spider, and redirected away from herself and toward the demons.  But… he wanted to save the people he cared for.  He wouldn't see his loved ones hurt…. However, the spider felt the same….  She wanted her beloved freed from the prolonged torture he had endured.  

Jason pressed the heel of his palm into his eye.   They were in sync and in discord at the same time. Jason couldn't make sense of what the spider was pushing him to do and what he truly wanted.  

He clutched his head again.  He had lost his sense of self.  He couldn't figure who was who.  All he knew was that he wanted it to stop.

“Jason!”  It was Dick.  He was at the far end of the platform with Bruce, near the stairs.  There was something wrong with him -- he was nearly doubled over, clutching his midsection as if in pain.  Bruce had pulled them back, protecting Dick, while facing off with two of the remaining demons.  Bruce had a sword out -- it looked familiar -- it was the sword of Destruction.  He swung it in an arc, and a burst of fire erupted that threw the advancing demons back.   Bruce was attempting to hold their position, assessing the remaining demons for a tactical advantage, but Dick was trying to pull away. He was trying to reach Jason.

_Leave him.  He is of no use.  Complete the task.  Free my love._

The pressure in his head was blindingly painful, but he couldn't get the image of Dick out of his mind.  Dick.  That look on his face.  Worry and fear, born of love for Jason.  Love….  

His head began to clear once more, the influence of the spider lifting from his consciousness.  That’s right.  Dick loved him.  And he loved Dick in return.   _That_ he was sure of. His love for Dick was indisputably _him_.  He focused on that, and he felt the spider’s hold on him weaken further.

“Dick!”  Jason tried to call out, but his throat was raw.  He turned back toward the fray, trying to clear his head -- to shake off the emotions of the spider entangled with his own and find his friends. Bruce and Dick were still at the far end of the platform facing down the two demons.  The Corinthian had freed himself from the silk bindings, and he was pulling the bone shard from Essence’s leg.  She had stopped her agonizing screams as soon as the shard was removed, but she was limp and weak.

Anger welled up inside him, not from the spider’s sadistic manipulations this time, but a dark fury of his own.  She had hurt the people he cared for.   She had tried to force him to abandon them for her own quest for vengeance.  She would pay for this, but first he needed to make sure his loved ones were okay.  He moved forward to help them in their battle when a pressure in his head struck him so hard it was like a physical blow.  

It was the spider.  She was fighting to take control again.  Jason stumbled to the ground, another onslaught of emotions crashed into his mind, and he fought back against the forceful invasion.

_Bloodlust.  Rage.  Vengeance._

_No!_

_Fear.  Desperation.  Sorrow._

_No. Get out!_

_Pain.  Heartbreak.  Love._

_Stop…._

_Free him…._

_…._

_Deliver him from the evil that possesses him._

_…._

_No one should have to suffer as he has._

_No one…. Yes.  He has to be freed…._

Jason was drowning in the torrent of the spider’s psyche.  It was too much.  His mind was too weak and damaged from the repeated violation.  He felt himself turning toward the far end of the platform -- toward the altar where the gray spider still lay.  The gash in his foot brought a flash of pain with each step.  His bad shoulder and arm were screaming in protest without the aid of the sling, but the spider was controlling his body, moving him even as his mind fought in resistance.

Jason reached the far end of the platform where the gray spider squirmed on the floor.  He was scrawling something with his fingers as Jason approached.  He was drawing a sigil -- using his own blood -- his fingertips ground down to stubs of exposed bone.  Up close he looked cadaverous --  his arms and torso so shrunken and skeletal that he was barely alive, if he could even truly be called that.  He opened his jaws to rasp a harrowing screech, before setting it's hands down on the sigil again.  He was smiling, a sinister curl of paper thin lips around his fangs, and the sigil began to glow.  

 _Free him!_  The spider’s voice thundered in Jason's head.   _Purge the evil.  Use your power before the sigil activates!_

Whatever the sigil was, it couldn't be good, and even if Jason had been fighting her influence before, in this instance he couldn't agree more -- he had to purge the evil from her lover or this would continue to escalate.  It could bring more demons, or worse, it could open a gate to whatever hell it came from.  

He grabbed the gray spider with his good arm, hauling it away from the sigil and pinning it under him with a sickening crunch. Jason hadn’t expected that -- for him to be so frail… it's bones so brittle from starvation and abuse… but there was no time for pity. He had to free it's soul.  He had to perform the purification rite.

Jason had done it numerous times at this point, and it had come to him innately even before he had been trained by the All-Caste.  Clear his mind, embrace the darkness. Accept the light… and strike.  

It _should_ have been straightforward… but he couldn't clear his head.  His thoughts and emotions were a churning mess -- hitting him in alternating waves of anger, grief, and desperation.

It was the spider.  She was still entangled in his mind, and she was getting in the way.

 _I can't do it!  Not with you in my head,_ he thought at her. _I can't focus!_

 _Do not play tricks. You risk us all,_ she responded fervently.

 _Don't fucking tell me I'm lying when you're in my goddamned head,_ he seethed.  The gray spider was struggling beneath him and flailing his spindly arm as Jason tried to hold him down.  He had him by the throat, but the thing was still grinning at him madly.  Before Jason could react, he used the exposed bone on the tip of its finger to slice a long deep cut across Jason's wrist.

 _Shit._ Jason pulled back, trying to put pressure on the painful wound, but it was too late.  The gray spider had slit open a vein.  Blood flowed, spilling drops onto the floor and onto the edge of the sigil.  It began to flare a bright red.

_Oh god, no…._

Jason felt it -- the moment the spider realized her miscalculation.  The same moment that he felt her presence abruptly forced out, and then another presence taking root in his mind.  Something else that felt dark and thick.  It was smothering him.  It felt horribly dirty.  Evil.

 _No. No!_ Jason tried to scream, but nothing came out.  It felt so utterly and completely wrong, this darkness that enveloped him.  He tried to move, but his limbs didn’t obey.  He was trapped.  Trapped inside his own body.

Beside him, he heard the gray spider laugh.  A short throaty huffing punctuated by a series of clicks.  It was delighted. Jason could feel it's sadistic pleasure as the demon inside reached further into his mind.  He fought back, but he could do nothing to stop it as he felt the darkness spread into his psyche.

 _No!_ A final burst of resistance, but it was to no avail.

Jason was possessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jason just can't catch a break, can he? Well, I guess he could... if I wrote one for him :P


	9. Chapter 9

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

The chaos that erupted on the stone platform happened so quickly, Dick was barely able to keep up.  One moment Jason was running to meet them, and the next, they were being ambushed by invisible demons.  A lifetime of training and his natural quick reflexes were his saving grace as a bone blade suddenly materialized and came crashing down nearly on top of him.

Dick rolled out of the way just in time, only to hand spring into another evasive maneuver.  He landed awkwardly, his injuries and the pull of magic still in his gut were affecting his balance.  It was making him feel off-kilter, and it was all Dick could do to keep himself from getting cleaved by one of the blades.  

They were surrounded, he could hear low growls and rumbling vocalizations.  They sounded large and animalistic, but except for the white bone of the blades he couldn't see the damned things.  Judging by the actions of the others, they couldn't either.  Essence was firing bolts of her power, but it seemed to go right through whatever was holding the blade.  They were intangible, except when they were attacking apparently.  Dick was struck by an unseen force that knocked him flat on his back.  The Corinthian was faring slightly better, managing to catch the edge of a blade between his bare hands, but then something picked him up and threw him clear across the platform.  Essence flew after him, only to be slammed by another unseen demon down to the ground.

“We need to regroup!  Fall back!” he heard Bruce yell.  He had the sword of Destruction out, blasting gusts of fire and deflecting, but it wasn’t doing much good.  The unseen demons kept advancing.  

“No!”  Dick called back.  “We need to get to Jason!”  Even as he said it, he could feel the magic draw him forward.  

He looked down the platform again to see Jason had been accosted by the spider.  He tried to shake her off, but then Dick watched in horror as she stabbed him clean through his chest.

“Noooo!”  Dick screamed.  He ran forward, springing over another blade, only to be smacked sideways by an invisible hand.  He rolled to his feet, trying to get a clear path, but he couldn't get past the multitude of blades scissoring and slashing in front of him.  He couldn’t see the demons that were attacking them.  He could only see Jason, halfway down the platform, struggling limply to grab the bony claw protruding from his chest.

“Jay!”  He sobbed, tripping over unseen claws, desperately trying to make his way to Jason.  It couldn't be… no… had the spider just murdered Jason in front of them?  

Dick wasn't sure what happened next, because in the next moment, the spider had dislodged her leg from Jason’s body, and he was somehow back on his feet.  He looked mostly unharmed.  Alive.  He was reaching a hand out into the air, the spider curled around his back, and let out a yell as the spider made a slashing motion with her legs.  There was an impactful force, like a concussive blast that knocked Dick to his knees.

He heard more low growls, somehow louder than before, and Dick looked up and was shocked that he could now see the demons.   They was surrounded by several dark and leathery forms with gleaming slitted eyes and pointed ears.  

Another dizzying blur of movement and the spider had sprung toward them down the platform.   She launched herself over where Dick was still crouched, tackling a demon that had nearly been upon him, and proceeded to literally strip the skin off of it.  

Dick ducked away and tried to pick himself up, but collapsed back to the ground.  The pain was a growing in his middle.  The spell they had used to get here was still doing something to him -- it was still pushing him toward Jason.  He curled into himself with a gasp.  It hurt….

There was a hand suddenly under his arm, yanking him to his feet, and Dick looked up to see it was Bruce.  

“Are you hurt?”  His jaw was set sternly under the cowl, but his voice uncharacteristically betrayed his concern.  

“No.  It's the spell,” Dick replied with strain.  “It's still active.  I need to get to Jason.  Can you see him?  Is he okay?”  He tried to scan for him again, but he doubled over as a wave of pain hit again.  He looked again, but couldn't spot Jason amidst the chaos.  

“He’s on the opposite side.”  Bruce was pulling them into retreat, launching fireballs at the demons from his sword as he did so.  Dick could feel the heat of it even through his insulated suit.

“Is Jason okay?” Dick repeated.

“I don't know.”   There was something in his voice… a fearfulness, not for himself but from concern for Jason.  Bruce tried to hide it, but Dick was too keenly aware of it because he was feeling the same.  Bruce had seen what happened moments ago too -- he had seen Jason stabbed through the chest.  It should have been a fatal injury, and yet it appeared Jason was alive.  How had he defied death yet again?  What did the spider do to him?  Was that still Jason even?

No.  Dick chastised himself. He couldn't entertain that possibility. He would assume that Jason was still the Jason he knew and loved until he found otherwise.  The magic was still pulling at him.  It was locked onto Jason… to more than just his physical body.  Dick just knew… he could feel it.

_Our love for Jason_ , the Corinthian had said.  The spell was drawing on him and Dick just _knew_.  It connected him down to the very core of Jason's soul.  

Bruce was still fighting off the demons, pulling Dick back toward the stairs, when he caught sight of him.  Jason, covered in blood, yelling and clutching at his head.

“Jason!”  Dick called out.

Jason turned to look at him, mouthed something that looked like Dick’s name, before some kind of internal struggle seemed to overcome him.  He turned away, face blank and emotionless, but not before Dick had seen the recognition and fear in Jason's eyes.

Bruce gripped his shoulder and pushed him down to duck another swipe from a demon. There were two demons before them, attacking viciously.  Bruce brought his sword out in another fiery arc, large explosive blasts of fire burst forth and hit one of the demons dead on.  Burnt chunks of flesh fell from various parts of it's dark body, but it wasn't  enough to stop it.  It continued to advance, even as a second demon appeared by its side.

Dick braced himself for another attack and pulled out the Nth metal batarangs from Tim.  He threw two at the second demon, aiming low at it's legs to disable.  His aim was true, the batarangs shimmed through the air in an arc, slicing at it's achilles tendon and bringing it down onto it's knees.

The thing was persistent however, and it began to crawl forward, when suddenly a third figure appeared holding a bone blade.  It was the Corinthian.  There was a brief moment in which the monster grinned deviously at him and Bruce, and Dick had the fleeting thought that he had betrayed them.  But then he turned and brought the bone blade down in a powerful swing, severing a leg off the closest demon.

“Listen to me,” the Corinthian called out, as he continued to hack at the demon’s other leg.  “There’s something wrong with Jason. She did something to him.”  He hacked off the other leg, leaving the demon thrashing around, and then grabbed the dismembered limb and used it to club the second demon that was still crawling.  He stabbed it through with his bone blade, pinning it to the ground.

He turned back to Dick, smiling and covered in dark gore.

“I need to tell you something.”  The Corinthian advanced toward him, and Dick reflexively stepped back in alarm.  Bruce moved between them, sword leveled to defend.  

The Corinthian looked annoyed, but stopped. “I’m not playing this time,” he snapped.  “This is important.  That spell we used on you, it's not a locator spell.  Not really.  It's a binding spell, combined with a curse.”

“You cursed me?”  Dick was outraged.  The Corinthian had tricked them!

“What does that mean?” Bruce was still in his defensive stance.  He hadn’t budged at all. 

“It means that pain you’re feeling?”  He pointed at Dick’s midsection.  “It's going to keep hurting until you break the curse,” the Corinthian said darkly.  “Until you take possession of what’s yours.  What you’ve already laid claim to.”

“What’s mine?”  Dick was not understanding.

The Corinthian arched a brow.  “Yes.  Yours.  This is about _possession_.  Of Jason.”

“What?”

“There’s no time.”  The Corinthian was turning away.  “I have to help Essence.  We’ll keep the spider occupied.”

“Where is--” Dick started, but he could see her.  Behind them, Essence had started firing bolts of power at the spider, trying to prevent her from going after Jason, who had taken off to the other end of the platform.

“Go,” the Corinthian made a shooing motion.  “You’re the only one who can save him!”

“How?”  Dick had no idea what he was supposed to do.  Take possession of Jason?  He wasn’t a telepath.  He had no such powers.  

“Follow the spell.  You’ll feel it.   _She’s_ taken possession of his mind.  You need to take it back.”  With that, the Corinthian started back towards Essence.  She was losing ground, her leg was bloody, and she was partially tangled in web.  She needed help fast.

“Come on.”  Bruce grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in the opposite direction.  “Let the Corinthian help her.  We need to get Jason.”

“Can we trust him?”  Dick gasped as he stumbled across the stone floor.  The pain inside him was getting stronger.  “Do you think the spell will free Jay?”

“We don't have much choice,” Bruce said urgently. He was literally dragging Dick along with him.  The pain was now coming in sharp jabs, a burning cramp that made it difficult to run.  

Up ahead Jason was wrestling something to the ground.  It looked gray and thin.  It was a person.  No.  It was another spider, the legs of its thorax dismembered and its body wasted away.

They were halfway down the platform.  Dick just needed to get to Jason, and then… he didn't know what, but he just had to help him somehow. The spell was like a wrenching churn in his gut. He was so close….  He could feel him through the spell, his presence like light in the darkness….

Jason pinned the withered spider to the ground, but then it jabbed at his wrist and Jason flinched away.  He was bleeding, rivulets of blood dripped from his hand. And then something on the floor began to glow.  It was a sigil.

The ground began to quake, the stones of the floor shaking so hard they began to separate.  Dick lost his footing, unable to maintain his balance between the pain in his gut and the increasing tremors.

Cracks opened up in the floor, and through them hot jets of steam shot up into the air.  Bruce was hauling him backwards as the shaking continued to increase.  A chasm began to open up before them, a boiling pool of sulfurous liquid separating them from Jason.  Dick could still see him, down at the other end of the platform. Standing completely still in the center of the glowing sigil, face blank and pale, blood still flowing down his hand.  The gray spider crawled up behind him, grabbing onto him and lifting itself to clutch on Jason's back, it's flattened sac of abdomen dragging on the floor.  Jason staggered slightly at the weight, but otherwise simply stood there vacantly.  The gray spider turned it's mutilated face to look at Dick with a wicked grin.  

“Get away from him!” he shouted.  Dick crawled forward, but Bruce held him back.

“No.  This situation is out of hand.  We can't get across. The chasm is too wide.”  His voice was flat and reserved.   At the same time Dick just wanted to scream in panic and fear over Jason.  Bruce was being too rational, too cold....

He shoved Bruce away.  “You’re just going to let that thing take him?”  He was shouting furiously. “That’s Jason!  He's your _son_!”

“I know!”  Bruce growled back.  “And so are you.  We'll save Jason.  I won't let you _both_ die.”  

He choked slightly at those last words, and Dick realized Bruce wasn't being unemotional. Quite the opposite in fact, but he was forcing it out of his mind so he could assess the situation. He was calculating their options objectively. Weighing their choices against their odds.  It was what he did.  He was Batman.  He became detached and cold, but it wasn't out of callousness.  It was simply his way of handling impossible situations.  It got him through the hard choices he had to make, even if it meant hurting his loved ones in order to save them.  

But this was the very reason that Jason had trouble understanding that Bruce loved him.  Dick had trouble seeing it too, but after years of heated arguments and coming to blows, he was learning to figure it out.  

“We don't have enough leverage to grapple across,” Bruce was still assessing their next move, even as the ground began to shake again.  

There was a violent jolt, and Dick looked up to see Jason -- with the gray spider still clutching his back -- holding his blood-covered hand out, palm up and fingers curled like claws.

Another series of forceful tremors, and several fissures opened in the stone floor around them.  They widened until they were several feet across and the landscape was immediately filled with a cacophony of disembodied screams.  A dark hand reached out of one of the gaps.  Something was crawling out -- more demons.  The gray spider was controlling Jason -- forcing him to bring the dark demons back to the surface.

There was a thump behind them, and Dick whirled to see it was the other spider. The white one that had initially kidnapped Jason, and to his surprise the Corinthian was riding on her back.  Essence floated beside them.  

“What're you doing with _her_?”  Dick said scornfully.

“The situation called for a momentary truce,” Essence replied.  Her disgust and displeasure were barely contained, but if Dick had learned anything about her, it was that she could compartmentalize.  Much like Bruce.  

“This is not what I intended,” the spider hissed and clicked at Dick.  “The demons possess.  Both my love and yours.”  She had the gall to look contrite, but if Essence deemed her a non-threat at the moment, then Dick could work with it.

“Fine,” he said curtly.  “Then let’s go.  Get me to Jason.”

There was another jolt of the ground beneath them, and more dark forms where emerging from the cracks.  They were approaching, closing in on them from all sides.  It was now or never, if they were going to get to Jason, they had to move.

“You two,” Bruce said, pointing at the spider and the Corinthian.  He was already formulating their tactics.  “Clear a path.  Essence will bring us to follow.”

The spider sprang across the chasm with the Corinthian on her back, clearing the pools of sulfurous water in a single leap to land on the other side.  They barrelled headlong into the demons that had already emerged there.  The spider slashing with her bonesaw legs, throwing them into the boiling liquid and cutting them down, while the Corinthian tore them open with his own bone blade.

Essence levitated Bruce and Dick across the chasm, and once Dick was on the ground he scrambled forward, fighting the pain that continued to tear at his insides.  Bruce threw an arc of fire with his sword, knocking back a demon that had pounced.  Essence followed on with another bolt of her power that sent it flying.  Bruce rushed over and hooked an arm under Dick’s elbow, pulling him along as the Corinthian and the spider continued to push forward.

“There’s too many,” Bruce was shouting.  “We can’t get through.  Can you cut us through the gray space with your blades?”

“No,” the spider clucked back.  “They have the bones of my love.  They will follow.”

“Then we need to get in the air!”  Bruce commanded.  He turned to Essence and she nodded.  She rose up, but was immediately pelted with debris.  A sharp stone struck her, cutting through the cloth of her sleeve and threatening her stability.  The demons couldn't fly, but they could certainly throw things.  

“I can’t manage all of you at once with them attacking.”  She dodged as a particularly large piece of stonework flew past.  Her mists deflected to some degree, but carrying another person would require additional maneuvering.  

“The Corinthian first,” Bruce directed.  “Then Nightwing.”

Dick watched as Essence cast a cloud of mist to envelope the Corinthian.  She drew her arm back, as if pitching a ball, and then launched him directly at Jason.  He landed awkwardly, crashing into a dark demon that erupted from another fissure to intercede.   

Dick missed what happened to the Corinthian next, because Essence then pulled him into the air in another cloud of mist.

“Are you ready?”  At least she gave him the courtesy to prepare.  Dick wasn’t as invulnerable as the Corinthian, and his middle was still burning a wrenching pain as well.  He forced himself to breathe through it.  Pain or no pain, he had to save Jason.

“On three,” he said.

“One.  Two.  Three!”  She tossed him through the air, and Dick used the momentum to somersault into a landing right in front of Jason.  He let out an involuntary grunt of pain as he bent to absorb the impact… and the spell… this close, it was a vise-like pressure combined with an overwhelming compulsion to make Jason _his._  He wanted to take hold of Jason.  He wanted to _possess._  The Corinthian was right, he just needed to follow the spell.

He propelled himself forward, hand out to grab a hold of Jason. He was so damned close and the drive to touch him so completely overwhelming. He was only inches away, when at the last second, Jason pivoted to turn his back toward him.  Suddenly, instead of grabbing a hold of Jason, he clutched the ashen, corpse-like frame of the gray spider.

“Aah!”  Dick let go immediately, but the thing had latched on. It was surprisingly strong as it tore through Dick’s suit and jabbed at his face with the exposed bone of it's fingers.  Dick fell backward as he tried to dislodge the spider.  It had it's jaws open, a horrible clucking laughter emerging from it even as it tried to bite Dick’s throat with it's fangs.  It nearly succeeded, but then it was suddenly ripped off of him.  

It was the Corinthian.  He had grabbed the spider and pinned it beneath him.   “Hurry!  I don't want to kill it if it's still in Jason's head.  It might kill him too.”

He turned to see a mind-controlled Jason stalking towards them, a bone blade in his hand.  There was a look in his eye that was chilling -- murderous intent.  

Beneath the weight of the Corinthian, the spider was laughing.  A wheezing cackle punctuated to long clucks.

Jason attacked him, bringing the bone blade crashing down at Dick so forcefully it sent chips of stone flying.  Dick ducked out of the way but Jason kept advancing.  He slashed again, but this time Dick countered with a blow to Jason’s solar plexus, aiming to disable him.  As his fist connected, he felt that familiar tingle of magic.  The same he felt when they had initiated the spell back in the tunnel, but now he also felt the overwhelming pull to _take_ Jason, to make him _belong_ to him, but… what exactly did he have to do? 

Jason recovered quickly from the blow, and lifted the blade again, but not before Dick saw the blood still running down his hand.  He was still bleeding through the cut on his wrist.  He shouldn't even be standing, and the more he fought, the more he was likely to hurt, or even kill himself.

He needed to get control of Jason fast.  He parried another swipe of the blade and rolled to tackle Jason to the ground.  Whatever demonic spider was controlling him, it didn't seem to have picked up Jason's training.  Dick was able to easily dislodge the blade from his hand as he slammed Jason’s hand against the ground. There was another gush of blood, and Dick pulled back instinctively, not wanting to cause any true harm.  Jason was still bleeding, his eyes were glassy, and he continuing to struggle, pushing back at Dick weakly with his bloody hand.  

Dick grabbed Jason’s face.  “Jay!  It's me,” he pleaded.  “Come on.  Come back to me.  This isn't you!”  He felt the tingling of magic increase as he touched him, the pull coming on so strong now that he was in contact, but he needed more… there just wasn’t enough of a… a connection.  

“What the hell are you doing?” The Corinthian shouted at him.  “I can't hold this thing forever!”  He was still holding the gray spider down, but around them, there were more demons emerging from the cracks.

“I can't!  It's not working,” Dick cried.  “What the hell am I supposed to do?”  Jason was fighting him with more force, using both hands to push Dick away.  And then he started screaming.  Jason was screaming in pain.  In terror.  He struck out at Dick, but it was weak.  Blood continued to flow from his wrist.  There were puncture wounds in his shoulder that reopened, and on his other arm, there was blood pooling under the skin.

“Jay!  Stop!”  Dick was nearly sobbing.  “Oh god, stop!  Please come back, Jay!”   If he continued to struggle he would do irreparable damage.  He would kill himself like this.  He would bleed out. The spider was going to kill him.

Bruce was suddenly there, helping him to hold Jason down, and immediately Dick felt a surge of… something.  Tingling.  The magic was increasing.  The pull inside him grew as soon as Bruce put his hands on Jason.

Realization hit him.  The spell.  They needed to _continue_ the spell.  He needed all of them to focus on Jason, just as they had back at the railway station.  He needed everyone here, touching Jason to finish the spell.

“Essence!”  Dick shouted. “Where’s Essence?”

She materialized beside him, and Dick didn't bother explaining.  “Help me hold him!  Corinthian, leave that thing.  I need you to come here. I need you to touch Jason!”

The Corinthian released the gray spider, kicking it hard in the torso before moving toward them to help.  He was only able to take a few steps however, before a dark hulking demon crashed forward to block his path.  

The Corinthian pulled out his bone blade, ready to fight, but a blur of white appeared.  It was the other spider.  She impaled the demon with a leg, and began tearing it open with her claws as dark blood sprayed and dripped onto the ground.

“I will hold them off.”  She let out a fast chittering.  “Do what you must to save him.  Save Jason.  Free him.”

The Corinthian wasted no time and clambered over to hold Jason’s legs.  Essence had joined them, trying to hold Jason’s arm while she simultaneously tried to seal his bleeding wrist.  Bruce was trying to hold Jason’s wounded shoulder without causing anymore damage, but Jason was struggling in earnest now, all the while screaming his voice raw in terror.  The buzz of magic over Dick’s skin increased.  The spell, it was triangulating… it was being bolstered with their presence, and their _emotions_.

“He is lost to you,” the gray spider laughed.  He had dragged himself forward.  It's arms were bending wrong -- the bones were broken, his forearms raw and bloody.  “You cannot free him.  Jason is mine.”

“No,” the Corinthian barked, and then turned back to Dick.  “Ask yourself, what's more powerful? That thing’s hold over Jason, or _yours_?”

That _thing_ , or his?  Anything it had over Jason was forced.  Artificial.  Created in violation of Jason's consent.  That thing had to have incredible power to do so, but what Dick had with Jason -- that was something they had built _together_.  From the ground up. Something that connected both of them in a way that thing never could.  Dick felt it in his heart.  He knew it down in his soul, and… he knew it down in Jason's soul too.  Whose hold over Jason was more powerful?  The answer was obvious.

“Mine,” Dick said aloud.

Dick could feel some kind of connection between them flare, a connection that went both ways.  Even now, through the buzzing of the magic -- the spell that was tearing at his insides and drawing him to Jason -- he could feel _Jason reaching back_.  There it was. He had it. More than just a connection -- it was a _bond_.  The spell was binding them closer together through a bond they already had. He felt the tingling of the magic build to a peak, the buzzing drowning out all other sound and vibrating throughout his body. 

“Mine,” he declared with conviction.  “He’s not yours. Jason. Is. _Mine_!”

It came out more like a snarl.  The ferocity with which Dick uttered the words surprised even himself.  Whether it was the spell, irrational thought given the stress of the situation, or the nagging undercurrent of jealousy over others that he had tried to ignore, Dick felt it like a powerful force of driving energy.  He wanted to make it known -- that the claim to Jason was to none other than himself.  They belonged to each other until Jason himself said otherwise.  The _audacity_ of that thing… the demon that had taken over both Jason and the gray spider… he would show it what it meant for Dick to have a hold over someone. He would show it what it meant for him to take _possession_.

He climbed on top of Jason, grabbed him by the hair to force his head back, and covered his mouth with a kiss.

It was as if there was a current of energy running between them.  The spell, powered by Bruce, Essence, and the Corinthian -- each fueling it with their emotions -- reached through Dick and into Jason.  The sheer power of it was astounding. Dick had never felt the full force of such… devotion… channeled directly through him.  Even from the Corinthian. For whatever his faults, Jason certainly had a knack for inspiring love in the strangest and most monstrous beings that Dick had ever met.

The force of it reached into Jason’s mind, blasting away the corruption of the demonic presence.

Heat and light.  It was the only way Dick could describe it, and it was reaching back into him from Jason.  Like a reversal of flow, suddenly the pain was gone, the curse broken, and it was replaced with the presence of Jason -- spreading throughout Dick’s mind and body.  

He felt Jason relax under him.  He had stopped his screaming and struggling to return the kiss, opening his mouth to let Dick fully in.  They tasted each other, sharing their breaths, and Dick knew he _had_ him.    _His_ Jason.  He pulled back slowly to look at him.

Jason’s eyes were glowing a bright white.  

“Dick,” he breathed, “let me up.”

Dick signaled to the others to release their hold, and began to move off of Jason, but then Jason shook his head.

“No.”  Jason’s voice quavered… like he was _scared_.  “Dick, don't let go of me.”

Dick complied, his own fear rising as he helped Jason up.  His eyes were still glowing that strange white….  Dick touched his arm gently as he stood, and Jason winced.  It was his fractured arm Dick realized, and it was probably bleeding internally from its continued use and Jason’s struggles.  Nevertheless, Jason nudged his hand down so that he could lace their fingers together.  Jason's hand was trembling.  

“Jay, it's gonna be okay.  We’re going to get you out of here.”  Dick tried his best to sound reassuring, but even as he said it, he saw that the dark demons were closing ranks.  The white spider was still fighting them off, and the others had planted themselves around them to defend.  Bruce and Essence were throwing bolts of fire and dark power, and the Corinthian cutting and slashing with his bone blade.

“No.  I need to end this.”  Jason tugged them forward on shaky legs a few paces until they stood before the glowing red sigil.  The gray spider was grunting and gasping a few feet away, but he didn't appear an immediate threat.  Jason glanced at him briefly and shuddered.

“Jay, what are you doing?”  Dick said in alarm.  

Jason just shook his head. Took a few steadying breaths before speaking.  “Don’t let go of my hand.”

Jason suddenly dropped to his knees before the sigil, pulling Dick down with him.  With his other arm, still bloody from the cut wrist, Jason punched his fist into the center.  Twisted.  Laid out the flat of his palm.

A white light glowed where Jason's fist was connected to the stone floor, and expanded outward in a widening circle.  It grew until it encompassed the entire sigil, obliterating the occult scrawl as it did so, and then shot outward in a halo of blinding light.  

There was no concussive blast this time.  No winding blow or explosive ringing of the ears.  Just an enveloping white light, and then a deafening silence.  The chorus of screams coming from the hellish fissures immediately stopped.  The blinding light… the silence seemed to stretch on forever, and through it, Dick felt Jason gripping his hand.  Finally, the light subsided, and Dick blinked the spots out of his eyes until he could see again.

The demons were gone, the fissures they had crawled out of were closed.  Bruce, Essence, and the Corinthian were nearby, looking around them in bewilderment.  The white spider was there as well, still covered in blood and gore.  She was kneeling just a few feet away, cradling the body of the gray spider to her chest.  Sobbing in undeniable grief.

The others approached quickly, and Bruce unclasped his cape to drape over Jason’s shoulders.  He was still wearing nothing but a dirty cloth around his hips, and despite the heat of the environment, he was shivering.  

“Jason,” Bruce had a hand out, tilting up his face, noting the light that still emanated from his eyes.  “Jason, look at me,” he coaxed.  “Are you alright?”  

Jason merely shook his head and looked away.

“Jason, what is it?” Essence tried, crouching beside him.  She had her hands out, grabbing at his wounded wrist.  She had managed to stop most of the bleeding, but he flinched away.

“Don’t,” was all he said and retracted his hand from her hold.

They were trying to get his attention, and though Dick couldn’t see his pupils, he could tell Jason was fixated on something -- the forms of the two spiders.  Jason shuffled forward, trembling, still on his knees, still holding Dick’s hand and eyes still strangely whited out, until he was kneeling next to them.  He put his free hand out to touch the gray spider, gently caressing it's disfigured face.  He was dead.  

“Take him home,” Jason said, looking up at the white spider.  There were tears trailing down his cheeks.

She nodded, and rose to stand, still cradling the other spider, and turned to slash at the air with her legs.  A tearing noise and a slivered portal appeared.  She walked through and Jason got to his feet.  Bruce immediately had a steadying hand out for Jason, and they entered the gray space of the seams again.

The spider oriented herself a moment before slashing her legs again.  She stepped through into a flat landscape of rocky soil, but with the most enormous trees Dick had ever seen.  They reached into a churning mass of clouds in the sky, and strangely, the branches seemed to feather into smaller dark lines that didn't move with the mass of churning clouds.  They looked like cracks….

It clicked in his head suddenly.  Dick had been too preoccupied with finding Jason earlier to get a good look at it, but this was where they had come before.  They had been inside one of those enormous trees.

In front of them, the white spider collapsed onto the ground, still sobbing as she clutched the other spider.  It's body had begun to crumble into a gray ash, but it was obvious it had been someone she had loved dearly.  Perhaps, Dick thought, its only fault was that it had been possessed, just as Jason had.  

Dick and the others watched awkwardly, unsure of what to do, when he noticed that the white spider herself was beginning to crumble.  Her body was falling apart, turning to a pale dust.

He looked at Jason in alarm.  He was still staring fixedly at the spiders, and still gripping Dick’s hand, he moved to kneel by them.  The bright white light of his eyes was fading.  Returning to blue… greenish… like teal. They were filled with pain and sadness.

The Corinthian made to approach, but Jason shook his head at him.  “No.  She's dying.  Just let her have this moment.”

They waited.  It was only a few minutes, but Dick had to turn away. As horrific as the spiders had been, he did not enjoy seeing this.  The sobbing quieted to soft gasping breaths, and then silence.  When he turned back, the white spider was unmoving. Dead.  Disintegrated into mounds of dust and sand, intermingling with the gray ash of the other spider.  Only her head and parts of her bony legs remained intact.

Jason let go of Dick suddenly and leaned forward to push his hand into the white dust, wincing in pain and distaste as he did so.  Dick looked on, slightly appalled at the desecration, but then Jason pulled his hand back out, holding a strange iridescent orange stone about half the size of his fist.  Jason repeated the act in the gray ash, pulling out another.  They were two halves of some kind of gem.  He handed them to the Corinthian.

“The fire opal.  One of the lost dreamstones,” the Corinthian said, taking the gems.  He did not seem surprised as he stuffed them into his pockets.  He looked back at Jason and nodded his head toward the piles of dust and ash.  “It kept them alive for this long, until you broke their hold on the stones when you purified everything.  Everything else, it's being absorbed back into this plane.”

A green mossy flora was beginning to sprout around the piles of dust on the ground, spreading unnaturally fast to blanket the barren landscape under their feet.  Above them the clouds were clearing, a warm sun began to appear from behind the cracks in the sky.  

Dick watched warily as the Corinthian approached the still intact head of the white spider, but then he  paused to look at Jason.

“I’ll need her eyes before they crumble,” the lids of his mouth-sockets were curved up in a hungry smile.

“What does that mean?”  Dick interrupted.  He thought the Corinthian was looking far too  abhorrent.

He turned to Dick.  “It means what it sounds like.  I'm going to carve out her eyes and eat them.”  He made a show of licking his lips before continuing.  “It will let me see her last memories.  The Master will want to know how this happened.”  He seemed to savor the disgusted reaction of the others before turning back to Jason.

“You won’t want to stay for this.”

Jason nodded and stepped up close to the Corinthian, who reached out and pulled him into a tight embrace.  Dick stiffened apprehensively as he watched the contact.  He saw Bruce and Essence do the same, but Jason closed his eyes and relaxed as the Corinthian held him, stroking his hair gently. It was unnervingly intimate, and if it were anyone else touching Jason, Dick would have even said the embrace was tender… even loving.

Jason finally stepped away, much to Dick’s relief, and the Corinthian brought out the bone blade tucked into his belt.  He slashed at the air, and a sliver of light appeared.

“Go,” he said to Jason.  “I can return to the Dreaming on my own.  I'll see you soon kid.”  He nudged Jason's jaw with his knuckle and waved for them to go.

Jason stumbled as he made his way to the portal. Dick and Bruce made to help, and as Dick braced his arm across Jason’s back, he could feel Jason was still trembling.

They stepped through, and Dick recognized the dimly lit tunnel of the Crime Alley rail station.  Back where they had first encountered the unseen demon, and where Zatanna and John Constantine had helped them cast the spell to find Jason.  The two magicians were still there beside the glowing sigil, but they were lying on the ground, unconscious.

A tall figure, all in white stood before them.  The Lord of the Dream.

Before Dick and the others could react, he raised his hand.

“Sleep,” he said, and Dick succumbed to unconsciousness.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- So wow, did anyone read Metal #1 this week? And then there was also Trinity #12. I swear I was writing this stuff before I knew those were coming out :)
> 
> \-- In the Sandman, it was said that there were 12 dreamstones that Morpheus, the original Dream, had imbued with power. One was the Materioptikon, a ruby which was used nefariously by Doctor Destiny. The other ones mentioned were a rose quartz, a fire opal, a black pearl, a topaz, and an emerald. Some of them were destroyed, and others lost. The emerald is the one the current Lord of the Dream wears, though it is said to be the weakest.
> 
> \-- The Corinthian can eat other people's eyes, i.e. take them and put them in his mouth eye sockets. It lets him see the last thing the victim saw, and also let's him take on certain characteristics of the dead temporarily.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah! I am getting this chapter out "early."

~~~~~ Jason ~~~~~

Jason walked down a long hall of polished white marble and ornate columns, decorated with floral arabesque and intricately carved bas-relief pictorials.  He was in the Palace of the Dreaming, and this particular hall held depictions of various aspects of the Dream.  Some were innocuous -- simple pastoral depictions of animals and fields.  Some were of the fantastic fauna of the Dreaming -- dragons and griffins, flying horses and firebirds.  Other scenes were darker.  Depictions of the Nightmare -- monsters of every horror, cruel and vicious snakes, beasts with sharp teeth, enormous spiders with fangs….

Jason looked away, heart pounding, breathing hard through his nose, and continued down the hall.  He counted the seconds as he tried to even his breaths.  Breathe in.  Hold.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  Release.  Breathe in again.  One, two, three….

It wasn't doing much to calm the shaking in his hands, but he was keeping it mostly together.  He turned down a corner and marched on until he reached an archway that opened onto a balcony.  He looked out over the scenery and let out another breath he had been holding.  The sky was a gradient of greens and blues, from a pale powdery pastel blue starting at the tips of purple-gray mountains, to a bright aqua blue halfway up the horizon.  It looked kind of like the color of Dick’s eyes, he thought.  It faded into a darker forest green as the night sky began to set in.  The colors changed with each sunset, but Jason’s opinion was consistent -- the landscape was simply breathtaking.  The Dreaming was the most beautiful place Jason had ever seen, though he was saddened he couldn't remember it when he was awake.  He just knew he missed it when he wasn't here.

This place had been his home for a while.  For the most part he enjoyed his time here when he was a disembodied spirit, given refuge by the Endless in exchange for the sacrifice of his soul.  He hadn’t known the full weight of what he agreed to at the time.  He did now, and he remembered everything whenever he came back to the Palace.   _Everything._  Including the events that led up to this point and time.

He had been pulled to the Palace as soon as he had entered the Dreaming -- right after he had stepped foot onto the railway platform and Dream had waved a hand and said one simple word: Sleep.

He knew Dream wanted to talk, but Jason wanted anything but, and so he had purposely avoided the throne room where he knew Dream would be waiting. Instead he had come here, to the balcony where he had first met the Corinthian, and where he had subsequently wiled away countless hours reading and looking out at the changing sky.  He had loved this place. He had found peace here. He only wished he could do the same in the waking world.  He wished none of this had happened, and he wanted to be back home with Dick.  He wanted to feel Dick’s fingers laced with his own and see his warm smile, but until he woke up, he would have to manage on his own.

He hunkered down into a corner of the balcony and looked out from between the balusters.  He felt… raw.  He didn't have any of his physical injuries while here in the Dreaming, but that was the least of what had been done to him in.  The spider and then the demon had torn their way into his psyche, taking control of both mind and body.  He had been truly frightened when the demon had forced itself upon him.  The loss of his own mind and body, violation of his soul, and the horrors that had been inflicted on the gray spider… the images of it rebounded through his mind.  Burned into his memory. If only he could forget….

He shook his head at himself.  He was being ridiculous.  It was only for a short time, until Dick had saved him.  But… after being stripped of all his defenses… it left him feeling incredibly fragile and vulnerable.  And lost.  

Jason had been in a similar state when he had first started seeing the Corinthian.  He had been so desperate and starved for affection that he had blindly accepted what the Corinthian offered.  He hadn’t known how to draw the line at the time.  Jason was well familiar with physical violence, but he hadn't been in the right state of mind to recognize subtler acts of abuse.  He hadn’t fully understood just how well violation and manipulation could be disguised as seduction.  Every time the Corinthian had pushed Jason into sex, he had come out of it feeling loved and wanted.  When he held him close amidst the horrors of the Nightmare, Jason had felt safe and protected.  Up until that point, no one had ever made him feel so… secure.   Not his own mother.  Not Bruce.  Not even Alfred.  

The Corinthian had shown him the truth eventually. Showed him the things that he had also made Jason forget, but by then it was too late.  They had both become too entangled.  He had always known what the Corinthian was, but he also knew that despite that, the Corinthian had in many ways defied his own nature for him.  The Corinthian was created to be sadistic and cruel, but there had been true affection between them.  The caring the Corinthian showed him was real.  As twisted as it was, there was even love.  And there still was, even now.

Booted footsteps sounded on the tiles of the balcony, and Jason didn't need to turn to know who had found him.  The Corinthian slid down onto the floor beside him, leaning in to put an arm around his shoulders.

Jason didn't respond immediately, just let the Corinthian draw him closer until he was leaning with his back against the warmth of the Corinthian’s chest.  It was stupidly pathetic of him, Jason thought, but he felt less exposed and safe with his friend so near.   Old habits seemed to die hard it seemed, especially here in the Dreaming.

“Thanks for coming for me,” Jason finally said.

“Your family and your girlfriend came too,” he replied.  “They were really worried.”

“Essence isn’t my girlfriend. Not anymore.”

“I know, but she still loves you.  Besides, That’s not who I was talking about,” the Corinthian teased.

“Shut up.  Yes it was,” Jason threw back irritably.  He gave the Corinthian a sidelong glance before turning back to look at the sunset.   Getting teased about Essence was nothing new… but now Jason could tell he was angling at Dick.  He didn't want to talk with the Corinthian about Dick though.  Dick was different…. Dick was _special_.  He wanted Dick beside him, and Dream would probably bring him if he asked, but he didn't want Dick entangled with the Endless.  It was Jason's mess to sort out.

The Corinthian put a hand out to cup Jason's face, turning his head back to look at him.  He was smiling faintly, but the maws of his mouth-eyes were taut with concern.  

“I saw what she did to you, Jason.  After I ate her eyes.  You should have let me tear the stone out of her heart while she was still alive.”

“She was already dying.  She already suffered enough.”  Jason turned away, extracting his face from the Corinthian’s caress.  He still had his arm around Jason though, preventing him from pulling away completely.  

“She hurt you.”  He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder, and then trailed it slowly down his chest and toward his groin. “She touched you.”

“Like _you_ haven’t?”  Jason stopped the descent of the Corinthian’s hand with his own, pushing it away and looking back hard into the Corinthian’s empty mouth-eyes.

“Of course I have,” the Corinthian shifted so that he was leaning over Jason now, kneeling with one of his knees between Jason’s legs.  He brought a hand up again to tilt up Jason's chin.  “You know what I am, and what I do.... and what I've done to you.  But that doesn't mean that I want to see anyone else hurt you.”

Jason swallowed the lump in his throat.  His eyes stung with the wetness of tears.   _Damn this place_ , he thought.  The Dreaming would not let him deny what had happened.  He couldn't pretend that what the spider had done didn't matter.  That it didn't hurt.  In the Dreaming, if you lied to yourself, it was liable that a nightmare, like the Corinthian, would call you out.

“It's okay, Jason,” the Corinthian soothed. “I already know.  You don't have to hide anything from me.”

His breath hitched, and he let the Corinthian draw him close again as tears leaked from his eyes.  They sat there on the balcony as Jason struggled to get himself under control.  Eventually Jason quieted.  He let the peace of the scenery wash over him… until the Corinthian nuzzled his face and pressed a kiss against his jaw.

“No, C!”  Jason sat up abruptly and pushed him away.  “Come on, I'm with Dick now.”

“I know.  I just wanted to hear you say no,” he replied playfully.

Jason sighed.  The Corinthian had startled him, though he was hardly surprised at his actions.  He knew Dick and the others did not like the Corinthian for this very reason, but they just didn't _understand_.  This was what a nightmare was made to do.

Jason made to stand up, but then a thought crossed his mind.  “You didn't hurt him, did you?”

“No, but I tried to _play_.”  The Corinthian's wide smile proved he had taken great pleasure in that.  “I couldn't help it.  Essence stopped me.”

“Good.”  Friends or not, Jason would let the Corinthian have it if he did anything to Dick.

“Your family hates me,” the Corinthian grinned mischievously.

“I wonder why,” Jason said snidely.  He stood, feeling resigned, but less lost. Less alone.  As fucked up as their relationship was, the Corinthian had made him feel better.  He always made him feel safer, and some of his confidence returned.  His peace had been shattered however, and it was about time he stopped procrastinating.  

“I guess I can't put this off any longer,” Jason said aloud.  “Let's go see Dream.”

He took a few more steadying breaths before proceeding away from the balcony, the Corinthian following.  When they arrived at the throne room, sure enough, Dream was waiting.  

“Jason, I am glad to see that you have been found.”   He motioned toward Jason in that airy but authoritative manner he often employed.  “I only wish that you had been retrieved sooner so that you would have remained unharmed.”

“Right.  If you were really so concerned, you could have just come and got me once they figured out where I was,” Jason remarked.  He felt more anger than he realized he had.  If Dream had come himself, perhaps the spider wouldn't have gotten so deep into his head. The demon wouldn't have taken control.  He could still feel the dark pit of evil that had violated his mind and tried to corrupt his soul.  He still felt it's filth clinging to his memories.  

“It is not that simple,” Dream replied.  “There is more at play than you know.  I cannot take direct action against the demons of Hell without consequences.  I… my predecessor, has angered the Lords of Hell in the past.  I shall not directly upset the balance further.”

“Then why help me at all?”  Jason shot back.  “You could have left me there.  Not that I'm ungrateful, but we’ve followed Destiny’s page to the end.  I've done my part of the deal, and your sister is the one who has to hold up the other end of the bargain.  You could have swept me under the rug.”

Dream was frowning down at him.  Not angry, but… disappointed.  

“I did not know you think so little of me,” he said, and Jason immediately felt guilty.  Anger was his default reaction.  When he was feeling cornered, he lashed out, but there really was no reason for it.  He had already been rescued, and he was safe.  Dream just wanted to talk, but Jason was feeling more volatile than usual -- he was still trying to pull himself together after what had happened to him. The manipulation and outright violation by both the spider and the demon… Jason had been terrified and was still feeling out of control.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that,” he said, reigning in the conflicting storm of anger and fear inside him.  The Corinthian had come up beside him to put a hand on his shoulder.  He felt calmer.  Safe.  He steeled himself to look up at Dream’s depthless dark eyes.

“I just… there's been too many times that no one's come at all.”  Jason choked slightly at the thought.  “Or they came too late.  I just... I'm thankful, but I don't understand what you still want from me.”  

Dream leveled a dissecting gaze at Jason, but then it softened. It turned into something else, like compassion.  Or pity.

“I have made mistakes in the past,” he finally responded.  “Actions and inactions that resulted in the death of my son, and eventually my own demise.  I do not wish to repeat those mistakes.”

“I already died.  And I'm not your son.”  Far from it, in fact.  Besides saving the Endless and following Destiny’s path, Jason had never really understood Dream’s motivations.  It wasn't that he was cold towards Jason, but he was distant, as he was with pretty much everybody.  Even after all these years, it felt like Jason hardly knew him.  Not really.

“No.  Of course not.”  Dream looked wistful, almost sad.  “However, you came to me as a child.  A lost soul.  I took you under my care, and made you my responsibility.  I have watched you grow and I have watched you learn, but regretfully, I have likely done you more harm than good.”  Dream drummed his fingers against the arm of his throne,  before stilling his hand again to sit in silence.  

“I am not without affection for you, Jason,” he said after a long pause.  “I wish to help you, if you will allow me.”

Jason opened his mouth, and then shut it, not knowing what to say.  He had never expected to hear those words from Dream.  To hear him say that he cared for Jason… it was a little unnerving.  He had been kind at times, but he was also awesomely powerful, and the threat of what he could do if Jason was too disorderly was unspoken, but always there.  Jason had seen glimpses of it the few times he had blown up in anger.  As it was, Jason hadn’t spent more time than was necessary in the Dream Lord’s presence.  Most of his personal interactions were with his subjects, like the Corinthian.  

It wasn’t unreasonable then, Jason thought, for him to be skeptical.  As much as having a member of the Endless standing in his corner of the boxing ring would be, he was sure it wouldn't be so simple.

“Help me how?  Will you finally let me remember in the waking?”  He wanted more than anything to reconcile himself.  It still felt like he was living two parallel lives.

Dream shook his head solemnly.  “I am afraid that is not possible.  Your mind has been further fractured from these recent events.  It will surely break you if your memories return at this point.  I won't allow it.”

“So what then?”  Jason asked, frustrated.  Of course he was more fucked up than ever now, especially once he returned to the waking.  The Dreaming did not have limits on the mind the same way it did in the waking world.  It allowed a greater capacity of understanding and connectedness to one’s subconscious soul.  But no doubt, in the waking world, Jason would return a mess.  He would be broken, and confused.  He wouldn't be able to fully process and accept what had happened to him for a long time.  He still hadn’t fully recovered from the events with Drakar several months ago.

“I will continue to put limits on what you remember, particularly what you recall when the demon possessed you,” Dream continued.  “You will not remember much of the latter, even in the Dreaming. It is too much for you to bear, Jason.”

“You’re tampering with my memories.  Again,” Jason replied bitterly.  “Great.”

“I can return them in time, but do you agree that for now, it is better that you keep your sanity?”

Jason nodded.  It was a question that wasn’t really a question. Of course Jason wanted to stay sane, but the cost was taking it's toll as well.  He had the sinking feeling that the reality was that he would _never_ truly recover.  That he would never be strong enough to endure the pain in the waking.

“I will calm your nightmares for a time,” Dream was touching the large emerald dreamstone he wore around his neck.  It was glowing faintly.  “I will allow you to heal slowly and to keep your mind intact.”

“And?”  Jason could tell there was something else he was leading toward.  Something Jason wasn't going to like.

“There may be... repercussions… from these most recent events.”  Dream was measuring his words carefully.  “I had suspected your abilities were greater than you realized, and I had hoped that we would address them in time as your mind healed and became stronger.  However, now your abilities will be known.  Others may seek to take advantage.”

Shit.  Jason hadn’t even thought of that.  He had been too busy wallowing to analyze the things that he had done. He had ripped the demons through the layered dimensions. He had opened gates into hell, and then blasted a horde of them back to where they came from with a single purification rite.  He had also seen the glow of the dreamstones in the spiders’ hearts…. Now the demons in Hell knew what he could do.  

“So you’re saying they’re going to come after me?  That I'm a target?”

Dream nodded.  “I do not know for certain, but it is likely that word will spread.  We kept your actions to save the Endless a secret for this very reason.  And it is not limited to the demons.  Others may seek to use you against them.  Or against myself and my siblings.”

“So what can I do?”  Jason asked, trying to quell the feeling of dread that was building.  “I'm not letting any of those fucking things in my head again.”  Being possessed... the mere thought of it had him feeling nauseous.  It wasn't something that he would likely survive a second time.  It would destroy him.

“Your teacher, Ducra, taught you well.”  Dream rose from his throne to approach Jason.  “She taught you to harness a power in you that was innate, but she was only able to take you as far as it fulfilled her own purposes.”

Dream reached out, as if to tap a finger at his chest, but Jason found himself batting his hand away before he caught himself.  He had just tried to brush off the Lord of the Dream.  Jason retracted his hand, embarrassed at his involuntary reaction.  

“I did not intend to startle you,” Dream said with brows knitted.  “But it serves to illustrate what I am going to say.  You must learn to protect yourself.  You must learn better control.  You use anger as a shield, but it is not enough.”

Jason bristled at that, but with everything that had happened, he couldn’t deny that it was true. The spider had proven that.  She had taken him apart completely and then left him open to possession by something even darker and dangerous.  

“How then?” he said.  “What do you want me to do?”

“It is not about what I want, Jason.  It is about what _you_ want,” Dream replied.  “I could simply keep you here.  Remove you from the waking, but it would be unfair to you, and it would effectively end your life.”

“The fuck you will!”  Jason protested.  “You don’t own me.  You can’t do that!”

“I can, but I won’t,” Dream replied calmly.  “Not unless I have no other choice.  I do not claim to own you, but others have proven they can.  The spider took possession of you, and entangled herself in your mind, so much that you continue to feel sympathy for her.  Even now.”

“You--.”  Jason was fuming.  “That’s not fair.  I didn’t ask for this.  I can’t… I can’t fight something like that!”

“Can you really not?”  Dream said, “Is that truly impossible?”

“I don’t fucking know!  Just tell me if you know so much!” Jason raised his voice.  He was nearly shouting.  “What the hell am I supposed to do?  I didn’t even know I could do… whatever I did!”

Dream was scowling a reprimanding look, and Jason tried to tone it down.  Swallowed and attempted to even his breathing.  His heart was pounding in his chest, and his hands were clenched into fists.  The Corinthian had moved to pull him back a few steps.  Jason had been on the verge of trying to sucker punch the Dream Lord in the face.   _That_ wouldn’t have ended well.

Dream simply waited for Jason to collect himself.  His stoicism was maddening, but he finally spoke, “She saw something in you, Jason.  Something connected to when her people first wove together the planes, back when the Council of the First Circle set the rules of the universe.”

“The _what_ now?”  He had no idea what Dream was talking about, but the spider had said something…. She had said _Circle_ ….  “What does that mean?”

“As I have said, your abilities are innate, Jason.”  Dream touched a hand to his chest, and this time, Jason was able to restrain himself from batting the hand away.  “You performed the purification rite even before you were trained, and before you died.  It begs the question as to how that is possible, given you are human.”

“Talent?”  Even Jason was dubious at that.  

“Possible, if your abilities were limited to only ousting the Untitled, but you have proven that untrue as well.”  Dream narrowed his eyes as he spoke his next words.  “A soul damaged enough to face my sister, Delirium, and return with their mind intact.  But who also has the power to force the void of Night from the Endless.  That is not talent.  That is power.  And unchecked, that is _dangerous_.”

Jason was silent, not knowing how to respond.  It sounded more like an accusation on some level.  A threat.  But what Dream said rang true.  Power like that in the wrong hands could be devastating.  They were lucky that Dick had managed to free him when he did, otherwise the consequences would have been dire.  

“This fucking sucks,” Jason grumbled angrily.  He did not want this. He did not want the responsibility of what Dream was implying. He had had enough. He had done enough damage, and he himself had been damaged too much.  

It was odd though, that Jason had not contemplated the nature of his own ability until now.  He had a feeling that it had not merely slipped his mind.  The lack of introspection in this area had been deliberate.  Dream did not want him to go down this route until he was ready, and had likely made him forget.  Even so, it didn't answer the question of _how_.

“You didn't answer the question,” Jason refocused.  “How is this possible?”

“You have crossed paths with the First Circle.  I can say no more.  My brother, Destiny, has laid a path for your soul from the first creation to the events that intertwined you with the Endless.” Dream gestured, and an image of the page from Destiny’s book appeared.  “But your path continues beyond.  We are no longer guided, but the path continues.  He has said this is the path of least pain.”

“If this is the least painful, I’d hate to see what the most looked like.” Jason crossed his arms in an attempt to center himself.  The Corinthian was beside him again, his two hands warm and steadying on his shoulders.

“Regardless,” Dream dismissed, “we must deal with the situation at hand.  We must find you a teacher.”

“A teacher?” Jason asked.  “To teach me what?”

“To teach you how to protect yourself.  So this never happens again.”

“But who?”

“I will think on this.  The choices are limited.”  He was looking over Jason again, assessing him with his strange gaze.

“So… now what?”  Jason said, looking away and shifting uncomfortably.  He wanted to leave and regroup himself.  It was too confusing, too much for him to process, even here in the Dreaming.  He felt both angry and frail, and though he welcomed the Corinthian's supportive presence, he found himself yearning to have Dick by his side.  Dick, who struggled through his own harrowing trauma and came out shining.  Who was able to reach Jason even through a wall of terror and desperation, and who was able to cast a lifeline to his soul as he was drowning in a sea of darkness.  

Dick was home.  Jason just wanted to go _home_ , even if it meant he would wake up broken and hurting.

Dream looked at him sympathetically as he touched the emerald he wore around his neck again.  He reached a hand to Jason’s forehead.  “I have removed the worst of the damage from the demon, and I will grant you a measure of protection.  It will suffice for now, but it is only temporary.  Until we can find a teacher, or a more permanent solution.”

Jason closed his eyes as an odd peace settled over him.  Dream was going to send him back to the waking, but he was doing something to calm Jason’s mind and ease his return.  

“Now, wake.”  

Dream pushed, and Jason fell into blackness.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be two more chapters after this, well, more like 1.5, but I'm setting up a next arc. I’m thinking there will be more fun and action and less depressing trauma, so for those of you still enjoying the ride, stay tuned after I post chapter 12. It might take me a couple weeks to get started again, because I need to get a plot worked out, and a few chapters written before I can post, but I already started, and am playing with ideas in my head for more fun times. I'm actually kind of excited. Should I just post the last two chapters now??? Lol. They still need a bit more editing though... and my self editing isn't the greatest I know....


	11. Chapter 11

~~~~~ Dick ~~~~~

Jason was still asleep.  Going on over twenty-four hours, and except for a brief period to change and clean up, Dick had stayed by his bedside since they had gotten back to the manor.  He and the others had woken in the railway station earlier to find Jason still unconscious, with Essence cradling him in her lap and tending to his wounds.  The Lord of the Dream was nowhere to be seen.

Bruce had, for the most part, handled the shouting and demands for answers that ensued.  Zatanna and Constantine had been maintaining the spell until shortly before the rest of them returned to Gotham with Jason.  That was when the Lord of the Dream had arrived and rendered all of them unconscious.  All of them except Essence, who pointedly ignored any questioning directed at her.  

“I have no obligation to you.”  She simply shrugged at Zatanna’s inquisition.  “I follow the Lord Dream, and I am only here to help Jason.”

Dick didn't pay much attention to the conversation after that either. His focus was on Jason.  Dick had knelt beside him, holding his hand while Essence finished whatever healing magic she was working.

“He is stabilized,” she eventually spoke.  “Magic can have unexpected costs on the body.  It is better if we let him rest now, and heal naturally.”  She turned to Dick.  “You will care for him at the manor?”

Dick nodded.

Essence levitated Jason gently then, and opened a portal to the Bat Cave.  At some point Bruce must have quelled the questions enough that Zatanna and Constantine didn't follow, and now, hours later, Dick continued to sit worriedly by Jason’s bed.

Essence had given her assurances that Jason was merely asleep.  The Lord Dream had told her himself that he simply needed to speak with Jason, and that he would need time to repair some of the damage done to Jason’s psyche.  Dick believed her -- that Essence had Jason’s wellbeing first and foremost at heart, because she was still here.  At the manor.  She hadn’t yet left.

Which left Dick feeling irrationally upset.

He knew it was unjustified, but he couldn't help being irked at her continued presence. She had disappeared only briefly after she had helped move Jason upstairs, presumably to rest or do whatever it was she did, but for the most part, she had also continued to stay at Jason's bedside, holding his hand while he slept.  

Holding the hand that _Dick_ wanted to be holding, because Essence had managed to park herself on Jason’s side without the damaged wrist.  She had sealed his wounds, but his injuries were still tender.  Dick didn't want to jostle him and cause any more strain to his wounds, so he settled for just laying a hand over Jason’s arm on the opposite side, though he continued to eye the way Essence had intertwined her fingers with Jason's covetously.  And when Bruce and Alfred were present, Jason didn't have enough hands to go around.  

Dick had shifted so Alfred could lay an affectionate hand over Jason as well, and to Dick’s annoyance, Essence actually gave up her spot for Bruce.  The two younger bats had also been in and out to check on Jason’s recovery -- Tim running another set of scans and Damian fussing over Dick while trying to hide his concern for Jason, but fortunately neither of them were inclined to clasp onto any of Jason’s limbs.

Eventually the others readied for the night's patrol.  Bruce gave a final squeeze of Jason’s hand before leaving his care to Dick and Essence.  An awkward silence settled, interrupted only by the faint beeps of the medical monitors in the background.

“Don't you have somewhere to be?”  Dick couldn't take it any longer.  Essence had reclaimed her spot after Bruce and Alfred left, and they had been sitting in tense silence for what seemed like hours.  

“This is my duty,” she replied without looking up.  “The Lord Dream insisted.”

“Oh really.  Is that all it is?”

That prompted more of a reaction, and Essence flitted her gaze to him, eyes narrowed.  “Your jealousy is unwarranted.”

“I am not jealous,” Dick snapped, though perhaps neither of them believed that.  “I'm just… protective.  You were hardly around last time Jason was laid up.  What's so different now?”

“I had other duties to attend to at the time. I was given the amulet Jason purified to cleanse the Acres of All.”  Essence sighed softly as she returned her eyes toward Jason.  “I have not been absent.  As I have previously said, I have been monitoring his recovery.”

“Right.”  Not a lie, but perhaps not the whole truth.  Despite the cold exterior and antagonistic behavior, Dick could tell she was uncomfortable under his scrutiny.  “What is it that you want from him?  You're not just ‘monitoring’ his recovery.  You're… _close_ to him.”

“I'm not sure what it is you want to hear.”  She didn't avert her gaze from Jason, merely addressed Dick by default of there not being anyone else conscious in the room.  “I have said it before, that I care deeply for Jason.  That has not changed.  I regret not having protected him from being abducted, but he has always wanted to be independent.  I had thought he was cared for well enough. I had thought he was safe, but I was wrong.”

Dick didn't miss the not-so-subtle jab at his inability to protect Jason from harm.  It was clear Essence still blamed him, but what he hadn’t realized was that she also blamed herself.

Dick sighed and tried to mentally take a step back -- to assess the uneasy tension between him and Essence.  His reluctantly acknowledged jealousy notwithstanding, Dick knew she had good intentions toward Jason.  He had even felt it -- her love -- through the binding spell.  Strictly speaking, her feelings for Jason wasn't the problem. The problem was that Dick found it hard enough to get Jason to let him in, and even though he knew he had already monopolized almost all of Jason's emotional bandwidth over the last several months, he felt irrationally afraid that Jason would run away and disappear again.  That he didn't have enough of a _hold_ over Jason to keep him by his side.  And when he saw how deeply rooted others, like Essence, and disgustingly, the Corinthian, were in Jason’s heart, he couldn't help but wonder if he was the same.

It was irrational.  And stupid.  Dick had never been so possessive of his lovers before.  Then again, he had never had to work so hard to keep their attention like he did with Jason.  Even when he was with Kori, though her attention span was notoriously short, her feelings were always transparent.  Not so with Jason.  He was like a black box -- impossible to see what was inside.  Though he was incredibly attentive and supportive as Dick worked through the aftermath his violation, Jason still closed himself off when it came to his own issues.  Dick just couldn't get through to him easily.  It was even true with the binding spell they had used to free him.  He had felt that Jason loved and _needed_ him right back -- that part of their relationship Dick had no doubt, but he hadn’t been able to reach Jason on his own. He had needed the powerful emotions of others to help, and it left him feeling a niggling doubt that maybe he just wasn't enough.

“Stop it,” Essence interrupted his thoughts.  “Jason questions his self-worth enough.  He does not need you to do it too.”

“What, are reading my mind too?”  Dick had little understanding of Essence’s power.  He would be disturbed, but not surprised if she did have some telepathic ability.

“No.  It is simply obvious,” she sneered.  “Your jealousy. Your possessiveness.  You are insecure.”

“What, and you’re so perfect?”  Dick snarled back. “You think Jason would do better with you?”

To Dick’s surprise, Essence replied with a self-deprecating huff. “If only,” she said.  “He cares for me, but he will never fully trust me again.  He has seen the worst in me, and will not hesitate to believe the worst in me again.  You however… he will continue to believe in only the best in you.  I can protect him, but I cannot give him _hope_ in the way you can.  That is why he needs you. That is why he _chose_ _you_.”

Oh.  That wasn't what Dick had expected to hear.  He had expected a fight, but Essence just seemed resigned.  

“I traded my freedom to save him,” she continued.  Her expression was… not bitter, but somber.  “I do not know the details of what bargain Jason had with the Endless, but I know enough that he had done the same.  He traded his soul for the chance to save the ones he loved.  I had… difficulty… coming to terms with my own debt to the Lord Dream, but Jason understood.  That is why we talked often.”

The coldness and contempt she had shown him earlier was gone.  Jason was clearly dear to her, perhaps the only person in this world she felt comfortable talking to.  The fact that she was now opening up to Dick spoke to her loneliness, and of her willingness to put aside her own jealousy for the sake of Jason.

Dick felt the tension between them ease slightly, though she hadn’t let go of Jason's hand the entire time.  It was as if she was afraid Jason would disappear if she released him.  It echoed Dick’s own thoughts, and he realized then that for Essence, Jason was probably the same to her as she claimed Dick was to Jason.  He was her hope, because she saw the good in him that she couldn't see in herself.

Strange that.  This chain of entanglements that had them both at odds and intertwined.  He realized that they needed each other, but in different ways.  Dick still felt that underlying jealousy.  He still felt possessive, but he would also likely need Essence’s help to keep Jason safe.  And in return, Essence would continue to have access to Jason.

“Jason is in need of protection.”  She was eerily mirroring his thoughts, and Dick found himself wondering again at her capacity for mind reading.  “Now more than ever.  The Lord Dream was clear on this.”

That stopped Dick short.  “He is?  Why?”

“His abilities are more than any of us knew.  To be both vulnerable and powerful is not a good combination.”

Dick cursed, understanding the implications.  “What can we do?”

“What we are already doing.  We care for him. We protect him.”

They lapsed into silence again afterwards, and Dick found himself lulled to sleep as he rested his head and arms on the edge of the bed.  It seemed like only minutes later that he woke to the murmuring of voices.  It sounded like Essence… and Jason.  They were talking.  Jason was awake!

“Jay!” Dick sat up, fully awake, and half climbed onto the bed, narrowly avoiding the criss-cross of IV lines and monitor wires.  He put his hand out to caress Jason’s face, relief and joy filling him at finally seeing his lover awake.  It had been close to midnight when he had laid his head down, but now there was sunlight streaming through the windows.  Essence was still on the opposite side of the bed, still holding Jason’s hand.  And Jason was still lying in the bed, but his eyes were open and looking toward Dick in slight startlement.

“Dick,” Jason smiled weakly.  He looked haggard and wan, the intensity Dick normally saw in his eyes subdued.  “I told Essence not to wake you.  She said you hadn’t slept.”

Dick stifled a sob, brushing a lock of hair from Jason's face.  “I'm fine.  Are you okay?  How are you feeling?”

Jason looked blank for a moment, then looked away to stare at the ceiling.  “I'm… not sure.”  He flicked his gaze back to Dick.  “I think… he made me forget.”

“Who?”  Dick asked, but there could only be one person… one _being_ he could be talking about.

Jason fumbled with his hands, extracting the one Essence was holding and twisting in an attempt to sit up.  He winced in pain.  Essence had repaired most of his fracture, but it was still bound and immobilized, and the wrist of his other arm was bandaged as well.

“Dick,” Jason reached toward him, and Dick gently laid his hands on Jason's chest, pushing him down until he was back on the bed.

“Jay, just take it easy,” Dick soothed.  

“I have healed most of your wounds, Jason, but it is best to let the body naturally heal the rest,” Essence echoed.

Jason acquiesced, but still reached his injured hand out to grasp Dick’s, even as Essence reclaimed her hold on his other.  He was tense.  Dick could feel it in his grip, and there was a slight tremble of his hand.  

“Dick.”  Jason said his name again, almost pleading.  He was trying to tell Dick something, but he was struggling.  His breaths were coming quicker, and shallow.  

“Essence,” Dick caught her eye.  “Can you give us some time to talk?  Alone?”

Essence nodded, seeming to catch his drift.  Jason was trying to hold it together, but keeping it in wasn't what he needed right now.  He shouldn't  have to continue to try and bear the burden of trauma alone, and Dick hoped he would feel less exposed if it was just the two of them.

Essence gave him a slightly hateful look.  It seemed she was still not entirely happy that Jason preferred him over her, but she excused herself.  “I will update the others,” she said, and gave Jason's hand a final squeeze before she floated out the bedroom door, shutting it behind her.

“Dick.”  Jason was rolling onto his side again as soon as the door closed.  Dick scooted further onto the bed, seating himself against the headboard and pulling Jason into his arms.

He let out a shuddering breath as he clutched at Dick, and in return he held onto Jason tighter.

 _God, how had this happened again so soon?_  Dick thought.  Jason had barely started to recover from the events with the Endless.  Dick felt anger at himself, for not having done more to make sure Jason was safe.  He found himself agreeing with Essence’s scathing assessment of him again.  After everything Jason had done for him, Dick should have done more.  And now Jason was broken again, and Dick felt helpless to do anything to fix him. All he could do sit here and hold him, hoping that his love would be enough.

“Dick,” Jason breathed again.  “I don't…,” he stuttered and swallowed his words.  He tried again.  “I can’t….”

“It’s okay, Jay.”  Dick stroked his back gently.  “You don't have to say anything.  Not if you don't want.”

Dick had wanted to ask what happened after he had been abducted, but stopped himself.  Jason was teetering on the edge of an emotional cliff, and if Dick pushed he could send him over.  Jason would break down, close himself off, or run away. Take your pick. Either way it wouldn't end well if Dick wasn’t careful.  He had to keep Jason steady. He had to make sure Jason felt safe.

Jason shook his head, an ambiguous gesture that did nothing to indicate what he was really thinking.  He merely shifted lower so he was half in Dick’s lap, cradled in his arms and leaning against his chest.  He looked up at Dick with a pained expression, eyes red and watery.  His gaze was searching, the intensity Dick was used to seeing returning, until he seemed to find what he was looking for in Dick’s eyes.  A confirmation that what they had was still there perhaps. 

He felt Jason relax in his arms, and Dick let himself breathe a sigh of relief as well.  He needed this as much as Jason did.  He needed to feel the warmth of Jason's presence.  Even now at his most vulnerable, simply holding him had Dick feeling more solid. Jason was still his emotional anchor, but at the same time, Dick was conscious of his fragile state.  He didn't know what had happened to Jason during the last couple days after the spider had taken him. He knew Jason had been stripped, probably tortured and then possessed, but only Jason knew the details of what had transpired.  He also knew Jason had been truly terrified back on that hellish plane.  He had seen and heard it in his screams, even felt it through their connection from the spell, right up until Dick had grabbed his hair and forced him into a kiss.

Dick felt himself flush at the memory, a confusing mix of guilt and arousal washing over him.  He mentally chastised himself.  Sex was probably the last thing Jason needed right now.

“I’m sorry,” Dick found himself saying aloud.  “About what I did back there.  I wanted to save you, and the spell….”

“No,” Jason cut him off. “Whatever it was, whatever you did, it freed me.  When I was… I couldn't….”  Jason gripped his hand hard as he stumbled on his words again.  “I could feel the others, but it was you.   _You_ pulled me out....”

“Jay….”  He returned the grip on his hand.  

“Just don't let me go.”

“I won't.”  He had almost lost Jason to that demon, and who knows what unspeakable horror Jason had experienced for the time that he had been possessed.  It was brief, but so damaging Jason couldn't even bring himself to speak about it.  Dick was not going to let go.  Ever. Not if he could help it.

Dick held him close, and Jason seemed content to sit in silence, wrapped in his arms, until a gentle thumping resounded against the bedroom door.

A muffled voice followed.  “Jason? Dick? Are you alright?”  It was Bruce, and Dick guessed that Essence had done her best to play interference, but he was likely at the limit of his patience given his worry and concern.  “I'm coming in.”

Bruce burst in, and Jason shifted so that he was sitting up.  The customary fussing ensued, with Bruce awkwardly expressing his concern, even grabbing Jason’s shoulders in a half-embrace, before setting in on the questioning.  Jason bore it with uncharacteristic cooperativeness, but he wasn't able to get very far without hitting the same mental blocks he had before when Bruce had tried to grill him on the Endless.

“I don't know what else to tell you, Bruce,” Jason said dejectedly.  “I don't know how she knew.  She just saw it somehow.  She knew what I could do.   _I_ didn't even know.”

“Are there more of them?”  

“No.”  Jason looked visibly upset.  “They were the last of their kind.  She showed me that.”

“Did you see him?  The Lord of the Dream.”  Bruce’s voice was growing darker, more probing.  “While you were unconscious?”

“I… yes.  I think he tried to help me.”

“By making you forget,” Bruce said through gritted teeth.

“Yes… no.  I remember, but...”  Jason brought a hand up to his temple, squeezing his eyes shut.  “I don't know!”

“That's enough for now, Bruce,” Dick interrupted.  Jason was becoming agitated, and Bruce was becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of answers. He wasn’t angry at Jason directly, but Dick knew Jason wouldn't see it that way if the questioning went any further.  

“Bruce, go find Alfred,” Dick added sternly.  “Get Jay something to eat.”  

Bruce didn't budge for a long minute.  He just looked disgruntled, an obstinate set to his jaw.  Dick stared him down.  He could out-stubborn anyone.  Even Batman.  Eventually Bruce gave in, and got up to leave.  He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder before he stepped away.  “I’m just worried, Jason.  I’m glad you’re back safe.”

Jason nodded, eyes downcast.  

Dick turned back to Jason, and in a softer voice, “Can you stand? Let's get cleaned up.”

Jason nodded, and Dick took his hand, intertwined their fingers together, and led him away.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jason was mostly physically recovered, thanks to Essence’s magic, and after a few more days passed, he insisted on getting around without a sling or bandages.  A sullen lassitude settled over Jason however, and Dick grew concerned.  Tim managed to draw Jason into conversation on a few occasions, but he seemed restless, and distant.  When Dick was with him, he was oddly clingy, but then he would disappear into various parts of the manor for hours at a time.  

They slept cradled in each other's arms, sharing warmth and comfort but little else.  Dick wanted to touch him, kiss him, hold him close, but Jason still seemed… fragile.  There was something definitely off.  There was something he was working through, and so Dick refrained from initiating anything intimate.  In the mornings, when he woke, Dick would usually find Jason gone.  He would often find him later, ensconced in one of the balconies, watching the sunrise or sunset, a look of sadness on his face.  Dick wasn’t sure what to make of his mercurial moods.  Jason had always been somewhat fickle, and he was falling back into his old patterns of disappearing like he did during his recovery months before.  He tried to give Jason space, but it frustrated him to no end that Jason still wasn't talking much.  He wasn’t opening up to Dick the way he had hoped he would.  

Essence had made herself scarce as well, though now that he knew to look for her, occasionally Dick would glimpse a gray mist out of the corner of his eye, and once or twice he heard Jason talking softly right before Dick would happen upon him, seemingly alone in a room.  She would be gone by the time Dick entered.  He was slightly annoyed at the way she was deliberately sneaking around him, but he supposed it was something he would have to accept.  Resentment and jealousy aside, she was a powerful ally and, despite her doubts, Jason still trusted her.  Dick didn't like her continued influence on Jason, but he would live with it for now.  

Dick was surprised though, when at the end of the week Jason insisted they go back to their apartment.

“Dick,” Jason suddenly accosted him in a hallway and grabbed his hand.  “I want to get out of here.  Let's go home.”

“Okay.  Uh, now?”  Dick knew Bruce would be pissed, and extremely worried if they up and left.  He had been extraordinarily protective over the last few days, ramping up security so much that not even a squirrel could cross the grounds undetected.  He had also surreptitiously brought in Zatanna to ward the manor.  Dick wasn’t sure if Jason had noticed Bruce’s attempts at fortification,   but now that Dick thought about it, he probably did.  It was probably why he wanted to leave.

Tim had already beefed up security at their apartment, and Dick wouldn't have been surprised if Bruce had taken other precautions as well, so Dick agreed.  

They left without saying a word to anyone, borrowing a car from the manor garage to drive back into Gotham City.  Jason was silent the entire way home, but as soon as they entered the apartment, Jason reached for him.  He snaked an arm around Dick’s waist, nudging him forward until they were pressed together.  At the same time he kept his other arm at his side, giving Dick an out. Even now, Jason was being considerate of Dick’s sensitivities.

Dick had no qualms at the moment however. He had been missing the pleasure and closeness that their intimacy brought.  He wanted to pull Jason in and press his mouth into a kiss.  The feelings of possessiveness the spell had surfaced had not gone away.  They had been there all along really, masked by his insecurities and his own turmoil over the last several months, but now that Dick had acknowledged them, it was hard to pretend they weren't there. Something still wasn't quite right with Jason however, and so Dick was tentative as he leaned in.  

“Can I kiss you?”  Dick paused a few inches away, so he could look into Jason’s beautiful green-blue eyes.  He could feel the warmth of Jason's breath against his lips.  

A sad smile crossed Jason's features. “You don't have to ask.”

“Shouldn't I?”  He ran a hand up along Jason’s face and into the thick, dark locks of his hair.

“No.  You shouldn't.”  Jason closed his eyes.  Then, in a low breathy voice, “tell me I’m still yours, Dick.”

Dick tugged lightly at Jason's hair, tilting his head forward until their lips were almost touching.  So close Dick could literally taste the residual nicotine on his breath.  The smolder of heat between them had Dick’s skin prickling with arousal, all in anticipation of the yet to be consummated kiss.

“You’re mine.”  Dick closed the distance, pressed his lips against Jason's gently, until he parted his mouth and Dick slid his tongue in.  He brought his hands to Jason back, stroking slowly down until he could tuck his hands into the waistband of Jason's pants.

Jason sucked in a breath, pulling away momentarily.

“What's wrong?” Dick asked worriedly.

“Nothing.”  Jason shook his head, reaching out again to pull Dick by the hand towards their bedroom.

Dick followed, watching Jason for any signs of panic or discomfort, but there were none.  Jason perched on the edge of the bed, stripped his shirt off and undid the fly of his jeans.  He reached a hand out to pull Dick on top of him.

“Jay, are you okay?”  Dick was straddling his waist, and Jason brought his hands under his shirt to stroke his sides.

“I’m fine,” he replied.  “Please, Dick.  I… I _need_ this.”  His eyes were pleading, and his lips wet and parted wantonly.  Dick could feel his hardening cock beneath as Jason put his hands on Dick’s hips, pulling him down and grinding up against him.  “I need you.  I want to feel….”

He wanted to feel _loved_.  Jason had trailed off, but Dick knew what it was he wanted to say anyway. It was as the Corinthian had said, on some level Jason equated love with sex. If Dick denied him now out of concern, Jason would take it as a blow to his already battered self-worth.  Jason wasn’t just asking for physical intimacy, he was inviting Dick to share emotional intimacy as well.  The answer would have to be yes if he didn't want Jason to misinterpret his reluctance as a deeper rejection, which wasn’t proving difficult at the moment as Jason continued to grind up against him. Dick was already half hard.

“Okay.” Dick gave in, moaning a little at Jason's ministrations.  “Just lay back though, your shoulder and wrist are still healing.”

Dick stripped himself down, before reaching to pull at the waistband of Jason's jeans.  He didn't react this time, simply lifted his hips to allow Dick to remove them, sliding his boxers off at the same time.  He then let out a pleasured whimper as Dick shifted down to take him into his mouth.  

The glorious taste of clean skin mixed with Jason’s unique scent as Dick swallowed him down.   Slightly salty as he teased the slit of Jason’s cock.  The feel of Jason moving and bucking under him.  The sound of him panting and moaning as Dick stroked the jut of his hip with one hand and thumbed his taint with the other.  He revelled in the affect he had on the other man as he glided lips and tongue down to the root of Jason's cock, opening his throat to take him all the way in.  Bobbing his head, repeating the motion again and again as Jason ran his hands through Dick’s hair.  It had Dick feeling heady and hot.

He pulled away, releasing Jason’s flushed and ruddy hardness as he moved up to kiss Jason again. A little more forcefully this time.  Dick plundered his mouth, teasing Jason's bottom lip with his teeth as he reached into the end table to pull out the lube.

“Use your fingers, Jay.”  He guided the bottle into Jason's hands.

A moment later, Dick felt himself being stretched as Jason inserted a slick finger inside him, working to rub against that tender spot inside that had him sounding his pleasure in soft mewls.  Dick continued to kiss and tease at Jason's mouth, sucking at his tongue as he stroked Jason with his hand.  Another finger inside him, and Dick pulled away and moaned as Jason scissored his fingers.

“Jay, that's good,” Dick gasped.  “Now your cock.  I want your cock inside me.”

He felt Jason guide himself to line up against his hole and Dick bore himself down.  Felt himself stretch as the tip of Jason’s cock pushed past the ring of muscle.  Felt the thickness of Jason filling him, a slight burn that gave way to erotic friction as Dick moved himself up and down.

He leaned forward so he was braced on his arms, looking down at Jason. Watching the pleasure on his face as Dick rode on his cock.  Jason looked back up at him, eyes like piercing greenish-blue flames.  

“Tell me what this feels like, Jay.”

“Dick,” he breathed.  “Fuck, you feel amazing.”  He arched as he thrust himself upwards, hands on Dick’s hips, meeting each other in a mutual push and pull of heated arousal.  “Dick.  This… is….” Jason groaned as he rocked into each thrust.

“Mine.  Jay….” Dick ground himself down with fervor.  He leaned forward to graze Jason’s neck with his teeth, before sucking and kissing a line down toward his uninjured shoulder.  Dick tongued the curve of his neck, suckling his skin until he knew there would be a mark.  A new one, opposite the one he had left before.  He brought his hand lower to thumb a nipple, and Jason let out a throaty whine as Dick teased and rolled it until it was perked and hard.

Jason was rocking his hips up into him, but Dick wanted more leverage.  He wanted to feel Jason deep, and so he rolled off and braced his hands on the headboard, facing the wall.  He spread his legs slightly, angling his ass outward as he looked over his shoulder back at Jason.

“I want to take you in deep,” Dick said huskily.

“Are you sure?”  Jason hadn’t taken Dick from behind often.  Not since Drakar, but Dick was clear on what he wanted now.  He wanted Jason pounding desperately inside him.

“I can handle it.  Fuck me, Jay.”

Jason moved up behind him, kissing his nape lightly as he lined himself up.  He pushed in, and Dick pushed back to seat himself fully on Jason’s hardness.  He angled so that his back was pressed against Jason’s chest, and then grabbed his uninjured hand to wrap around his cock.

“Stroke me.  Make me come.”

Dick moved, setting a quick pace that had him bouncing upright between Jason's lap and the grip of his hand.  

“Jay, tell me what you're feeling,” Dick groaned.

“Hnnn….” Jason let out a series of inarticulate pants, which told Dick exactly what he wanted to know.  He pushed back harder, driving Jason to increase the force of his thrusts.

He was reaching his limit.  The pace was rapid and rhythmic.  Between the stretch and friction of Jason ravishing his hole, the feeling of being filled to capacity, and the pressure and slide of the hand around his cock, Dick felt his climax build and crash through him like a tidal wave.  His whole body arched in ecstasy as he spilled over Jason's hand.  He felt Jason push back into him, a final thrust that nearly lifted him off the bed, and let out a final yell of pleasure as Dick clenched around him.   Warmth spreading in his gut as Jason released himself inside him, and then a hot wetness that trailed down the inside of his thighs.

They collapsed onto the bed.  Dick was still seeing stars, panting and sweaty as he snuggled up alongside Jason’s side.  Dick trailed his fingers up his chest, feeling the rise and fall of Jason's breathing, punctuated by the spasms of post-orgasmic reverie.

Jason curled toward him, touching their foreheads and tangling their legs together.  He pressed a soft kiss against Dick’s lips and settled back so that they were looking each other in the eye.  Jason’s expression was calm.  Relaxed.  Open.  Dick recognized the look.  He didn’t see it often, and usually he saw it at moments like these. After they had made love, and they were both comfortable and sated.  Jason would be at ease. He would be ready to talk.

“Did I hurt you?”  Dick brought a hand down to caress the line of Jason's hip, where he had tugged at his waistband earlier.

“No.” Jason shifted closer.  Too close for Dick to see his eyes, but when he spoke he could feel Jason’s lips brushing his own.  “You would never,” he said, almost a whisper.  “You couldn't.”

“I have in the past.”  Dick closed his eyes, remembering those times he had struck Jason in anger, when he had hunted him down and treated him like a criminal, instead of a lost and hurting soul that needed guidance.  But that's not what Dick had asked.  He hadn't meant that kind of hurt at all, and Jason seemed to understand what he was really asking.

“Not like that.”  Jason whispered again.  “You wouldn't hurt me like _that_.”

“But _she_ did, didn't she?”  Dick knew the spider had done something to Jason.  The thought abhorred him, that she had violated Jason in every way possible.

“Yes.”  Jason said softly.  He clutched Dick closer to him, grabbed for his hand to hold against his chest.

“I'm so sorry, Jay.”  Sorry didn't even begin to cover what Dick was feeling, but Jason didn't need anger at the moment. He needed to know he had Dick’s love and support.

“No.  Don't be sorry.  It happened, but she's gone.”  Jason paused.  Dick couldn't see his face.  He had tucked his head under Dick’s chin, and there was a wetness where Jason's face touched his shoulder.  Dick didn’t comment. He could tell Jason was processing.  His breathing was hitched, and he seemed to work his jaw and swallow several times, working through his emotions before he could continue.  “She was… lost.  She tried to take what _we_ have, but she couldn't.  Not really.  It just made her more sad.”

Dick stroked Jason's back gently, heart aching in sympathy for his lover.  He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned at how Jason was dealing with what he had been through.  He was _finally_ opening up.  Finally _talking_ to Dick.  But Jason had to use physical intimacy to get himself to this point.  It was what he needed, and though Dick cherished the fact that Jason still felt comfortable with sex, it was a little disturbing that he used it as a coping mechanism.  Jason was broken. Probably had been since he was a child, and Dick wasn't sure that he would be able to fix this.

“What about _us_ now?” Dick asked.  He didn’t want Jason to feel trapped.  As much as Dick loved him, he needed to make sure Jason wanted this too.   “What does this make you feel?”

Jason pulled back slightly to look at Dick, eyes red and brows furrowed as he contemplated the question.  Dick held his breath, almost dreading his reply, but then Jason closed his eyes, and pressed Dick’s hand to his chest again.

“This feels like home,” he said.  Dick could feel the subtle beating of Jason's heart with his palm as he spoke.  Jason was smiling softly as he went on.  “With you, this feels… safe.  Like what love should feel like.”

“It is. I do.”  Dick had never meant it more.  “I love you, Jay.”

“I love you too.”

  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dick woke to a loud pounding on their apartment door.  Jason was already up, pulling on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.

“What the hell?”  Dick sprang from the bed in alarm.

“It's okay.”  Jason put a hand out to stand down.  “I know who it is.  It's John Constantine.”

“What?” Dick asked in surprise.  “Why’s he here?  How did he even get up to this floor?”

Jason shrugged, and moved out to the living area.  “You're not going to like it.   _I don't like it.”_

Dick threw on a pair of sweats as well and followed Jason out of the bedroom.  He was waiting by the entryway, taking a breath to steady himself before reaching to disarm the locks.  

Jason pulled the door open, and sure enough, the slightly disheveled form of John Constantine stood before them.

“Took you boys long enough!”  He pushed past them and stepped into the apartment, blowing out a low whistle as he did so.  “Nice gaff.”

“Jay, what’s going on?” Dick asked, befuddled.  “Why the hell is he here?”

“S’okay, your dashing boyfriend here didn't want to do this either,” Constantine winked at Dick with mocking cheer.  “But good ol’ Uncle Dream insisted, and he threatened to haunt me with never-ending nightmares if I didn't.  So here I am.”

He grinned cheekily at Jason, who only continued to scowl, arms crossed in irritation.  Constantine was undeterred.  He reached into his coat, pulled out a tattered leather-bound book and threw it down on the nearby table.

“Jason Todd,” Constantine exclaimed, “welcome to Demonology 101!”


	12. Epilogue

~~~~~ Bruce ~~~~~

Batman was sitting down in the Bat Cave, running an analysis on the latest illicit drugs that were being trafficked through the Gotham Underground, when he felt the temperature drop. He saw a faint mist out of the corner of his eye, and the electromagnetic sensors registered a slight disturbance in the air.

Essence was here.

“Did you speak with him?” he said aloud.

Essence materialized beside him. Her lips were quirked in amusement as she spoke. “For a human, you are quite perceptive.”

“It's not that hard, if you know what to look for,” he responded.

“Hmm,” she crossed her arms, floating a little higher off the ground.  “I did speak with him, and he will grant you audience, but not here.”

“Where then?”

“In the Acres of All.” Essence raised her hand in an arc, and a portal appeared. “Come.  It is best not to keep him waiting.”

“After you,” Batman gestured.

Essence arched her brow at his caution, and twitched her mouth again in a tiny smirk. “Jason has picked up more from you than he likes to admit.”

He didn’t comment, and Essence proceeded to float through the portal.  He followed, pulling on his cowl and mentally checking his equipment before stepping through. He recognized the familiar landscape of the Acres of All from when she had first brought him and Nightwing here, after Jason had been abducted. This time however, she led the way down a stone staircase toward the ruins of a large building.  It looked like it had been a temple of some sort, judging by the remains of tall arches and high stone walls.  The facade was carved intricately with unknown runes, somewhat worn but well maintained. That meant the damage to the buildings had been relatively recent.  This place… this city had not been completely abandoned for long, yet the only person who seemed to live here now was Essence.  Bruce filed that away in his mind, perhaps to inquire about later if he could find the opportunity.

It was brighter inside the temple than Bruce had anticipated.  The ceiling was mostly intact, but there were a series of angled slits that allowed light to filter through at different angles, casting alternating stripes of light in a crosshatch pattern on the barren stone floor.  

In the center of the temple stood the tall white figure of the Lord Dream.

“Batman,” his voice echoed eerily through the chamber.  “I have heard your concerns. In fact, we have already spoken about this at length in the Dreaming.”

“I don't remember.”  It was statement as well as an accusation.

“No,” Dream nodded, “which is why we will have this conversation here in the waking.  So you remember.  I have a task for you.”

“I'm not here to do your bidding.  I’m here to talk about Jason,” Batman retorted.  “About his safety. Whatever you’ve done to him has put him in jeopardy.  You have a responsibility to help him.”

“I do not disagree.”  Dream had narrowed his eyes, but remained stoic.  “The task I ask of you is for Jason’s benefit.  I have already sought to give him some means of protecting himself.  I sent the man you know as John Constantine to teach him ways to prevent possession.”

“Constantine,” Batman growled, “is self-serving and conniving.  He can't be trusted.  I have already asked Zatanna--.”

“No,” Dream cut off.  “To learn true magic, it would take years.  Decades.  It is too long.  Jason needs tools to protect himself now.  Constantine may be selfish, but he has done good, and there are few others who have evaded and outwitted the demons of Hell as well as he.  He uses cunning and trickery, but these tools would serve and match the skills and disposition of your son well.”

“What about Essence then?”  Batman was still not convinced.  “Her magical abilities are powerful.”

“This is not my expertise,” Essence shook her head.  “I will continue to protect him, but my previous attempts at training Jason in the art of magic was….”  she pressed her lips together, her cheeks slightly colored... almost a blush.  She seemed to choose her next words carefully.  “It did not have the outcome that was intended.”

So Essence was not a good candidate either.  Bruce did not like the idea of putting Jason in contact with Constantine, but what Dream said was true.  Jason would be best served with training and tools he could use _now_ , and what he understood from Zatanna was that Constantine was the master of _cheating_ his way out of sticky situations.

Dream seemed to take his silence as agreement and continued, “This solution is temporary however. It solves an immediate need, but the task I have for you will serve in the long run to make Jason whole.”

“Go on.”  Bruce was wary, but the Dream Lord seemed non-threatening at the moment.  

“There are dreamstones.  I created them long ago and imbued them with my power. They were meant to be tools, but many were destroyed and some were lost over time.  Others were stolen, as Jason most recently found in the hearts of his abductors.”

Batman nodded. He had seen Jason pull the broken halves of a gemstone from the ash of the spiders.  The fire opal, the Corinthian had called the stones.  He hadn't understood what that meant at the time, but it seemed these stones were powerful, and there were more.

“You want me to find one of these stones,” Bruce surmised.  “But why search for a missing stone? Why not simply create more?”

“I have learned my lesson.”  Dream touched a large green emerald that hung from a chain at his chest.  “To set these stones loose in the world is dangerous.  To create more would be irresponsible.  The ones that remain must be found, and in the process, we may be able to make Jason whole.”

Dream brought his hands together, cupping them in front of him.  An image of a small dark orb appeared, about an inch in diameter.  The surface was smooth except for a round symbol, an unknown rune, carved in white on one side.  The effect was that it looked somewhat like an inversely colored eye.  The rest of the orb was… not shiny, but it had a sheen.  Like a satin finish, like a...

“A black pearl,” Dream finished Batman’s unspoken thought.  “It can allow the mind to traverse between the Dreaming and waking.  It was lent to an early god, long dead now, who used it to create the mythology for his people.  It was then lost to time.  If it can be found, it might allow Jason to recover his memories while keeping his mind intact.  It may be the key to eventually make him whole.”

“Why ask me?  Why not find it yourself?”

“Why you ask?”  Dream looked at him sternly.  “Because for one, Jason is your son, and his protection should be your utmost concern.”

“Of course,” Batman replied, slightly incensed at the implication that Jason was not at the forefront of his mind.  “That's why I'm here.”

Dream did not look entirely appeased, but went on, “Second, I am not omnipotent.  In the waking world, I am bound by limitations.  Finding this stone would take time.  I would not be adept or efficient, and I also have other duties.  You however, have the skills and means.  I can provide you guidance, and clues to solve this mystery, and most importantly….”

Dream paused.  His face was disquietingly serious, and there was an obvious, yet subtle, taunt in his next words.

“Are you not, as they say, the _World's Greatest Detective_?”

“Hnn.”  Batman grunted.  He had never expected that moniker to be used in such a context, but… it was a _challenge_ he would accept.  If what Dream asserted was true, he was better suited than anyone to find this black pearl.  If only to ensure that Jason would eventually be made whole again.

“Then you agree,” Dream fixed him with a piercing stare.  “You will help me find the black pearl.”

“Yes.”  As if Batman could even think to say otherwise.  As if _Bruce_ would refuse, when offered a chance to help his own son.

“I agree,” he affirmed.  “I’ll find the black pearl.”

  


_To be continued…._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- Stay tuned for next installment! I don’t know how long it will take me to get a plot worked out, but I am shooting for “soon.” I am going to research some ideas. Plus I need a little break. Writing a chapter a week was tough to keep up. I actually have a full time day job, a commute, and a life outside of writing about Jason Todd. I even have other hobbies… which has an unrelated bat sibling side story brewing in my head too.  
> \-- Special UBER THANKS to my small set of dedicated commenters. I loooved reading your thoughts after every chapter. It really made my day every time I got a comment that lets me know you enjoyed the story.  
> \-- So please please leave a comment if you liked this! Would love to know what you think, even if you're reading this way after this is posted!
> 
> Drafty Preview of what's coming next:
> 
> Jason downed the rest of the pint and slid off the barstool, ready to follow Constantine into wherever the back room was where Dave kept his black market magics. However, Constantine only shook his head. 
> 
> “Dave, would ya bring me a gin and tonic.” He smiled at Jason again and then waved two fingers back at Dave. “Make it two.”
> 
> “Are you trying to get me drunk?” 
> 
> “Aren't you a bright one!” Constantine chuckled. “Yeah, mate. You're always so wound up. Turned up to eleven. Live a little, eh? Don't you know how to have fun without kicking someone's arse?”
> 
> Dave set their drinks down, and Constantine immediately raised his glass. “Cheers!”
> 
> Jason sighed and lifted his glass. He knew this was a bad idea. Getting trashed with John Constantine would most certainly lead to no good, but it had been a long time since Jason had been out like this. Constantine wouldn't have been his first choice in drinking partners, but Dick was too overprotective these days, Tim was too uptight about being underaged, Roy had been an addict -- and he had burned his bridges with him anyway -- and that didn't leave many people. Jason didn't really have much of anyone in the way of casual friends….
> 
> So here he was, drinking a gin and tonic while Constantine rambled on about someone named Chas. Before he knew it, Jason had downed a second and then a third glass of gin, and was throwing back a fifth (or was it the sixth or seventh?) shot of whiskey as John Constantine -- “Call me John, all me mates do!” -- blathered on about how he used to be in a band.
> 
> “Punk rock? Seriously?” Jason giggled. Oh god he was giggling. He was well beyond tipsy at this point. 
> 
> “Hey, you have no right to judge,” Constan-- no, John -- declared. “I’ve heard that shite blasting out of your apartment.”
> 
> “Ugh, that's not me!” Jason put his face in his hands, laughing. “That's Dickie!”
> 
> “Christ, kids these days!” John slapped his arm. “That stuff’ll poison your head. I hexed the stupid player so he’d drop it in the toilet, but then next time I came ‘round he had signed up for bloody internet radio. Took me a while to figure out how to blow your speakers without it pointing back to me.”
> 
> “Oh shit! That was you?” Jason was laughing so hard he nearly fell off his stool. “He was pissed for like a week. A whole damn week!” He wiped at his eyes, trying to suppress his sniggering. “Don’t do that shit to him.” Jason was utterly failing at hiding his amusement. 
> 
> “Leave him alone,” he tried to sound serious again, but then burst into another fit of laughter that he tried to hold in, but it just came out like another damn giggle. He had to stop. Grown-ass men did not fucking giggle. “Fuck, I am so hammered. What the hell did you give me?”


End file.
